“... from the remains of ancient architecture) strains our credulity. Rowland is not always at her best, or most reliable, when interpreting the visual arts. The first Pope whose patronage she explores in detail is Alexander VI Borgia, whose apartments in the Vatican Palace range below the stanze which Raphael decorated for Julius II and Leo ...”

“... onwards, ‘is to relate a history or fable’ – to compete with the poet or dramatist, and best of all with epic and tragedy. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Delaroche reminds us that the ‘great business’ was not neglected in the 19th century, although by then there were those who argued that painting what could be seen, whether landscape or ...”

“... than ideas, and that since literature is written by people, about people and for people, it is best treated as human stuff and in a human way. Once upon a time Bayley would not have felt the need to spell out such a commonplace, but as fashions in the university have changed he has been drawn increasingly onto the offensive. The present volume acknowledges ...”

“... asking you to have anything less than what I’m hoping to have myself,’ ‘All I want is the best for all of us,’ ‘I’m trying to keep an open mind’ – are typical of his relentlessly fair-minded refrain. It is a measure of the subtlety with which Storey conducts the narrative of Present Times that we come in the course of the book fundamentally ...”

“... subject of feverish politicking by rival groups of astronomers, since different light receptors best served the interests of those studying stars and those scanning the planets. The verdict on the design is not yet in, especially as it is hoped that astronauts will be able to visit and repair the Hubble’s tragically flawed vision. A trenchant criticism of ...”

“... Not to know Goethe,’ A.W. Schlegel wrote poetically, ‘is to be a Goth.’ Nicholas Boyle begins the preface to Volume One of his biography of the great man by stating, altogether correctly alas, that more must be known, ‘or at any rate there must be more to know’, about him than about almost any other human being ...”

“... eventually joined their father, who had lived in America since 1910. The youngest, eight-year-old Nicholas, grew up in the States as Nicholas Gage. In the late Seventies, Mr Gage – now an investigative reporter for the New York Times – comes back to Greece to track down and take revenge on those responsible for his ...”

“... What​ does it mean for a romance to take the shape of a murder investigation? In a Lonely Place, Nicholas Ray’s elegantly bitter film about damaged trust, throws that question at its viewers. If all love stories are inquiries of one kind or another, the movie seems to suggest, perhaps they differ only in their relative violence ...”

“... have shockingly lax morals. The female dunnock often takes not one but two males as partners. The best a stern man of religion could say about dunnocks is that there’s no superfluous bump and grind when they mate – it’s strictly fertilisation business, over in 0.1 seconds. Fast enough to do it while your mother’s back is turned. Tim Birkhead and his ...”

“... intensity of action they deplored, in some cases feared. Those who felt most threatened did their best and nastiest to try and stop her. ‘Too much faith and too few years,’ droned Sir George Dyson, Director of the Royal College of Music. ‘It would be a pity to ruin your reputation so early,’ threatened the sinister Dr Sydney Northcote, Director of the ...”

“... as snakes, which are generally feared. Girl with a kitten and Girl with a white dog are among his best-known early works and two of his most successful recent paintings, entitled, significantly. Double Portrait and Triple Portrait, in fact show only one girl, with a single whippet in the former and a brace of whippets in the latter. As for the plants, it is ...”

“... of life, managing by their lights to survive to 139 and become the chief attraction of the ‘Best Pet Shop in the World’, a giant menagerie of Australiana, situated in Sydney, run by his grandson, but owned by the Mitsubishi Company of Japan. If Herbert really is 139, then he is speaking to us from the year 2025. This contributes to our sense of him as ...”

“... of heartless capitalism was prompted by Jocelin de Brakelond’s 12th-century chronicle. But the best example of this dialogue between past and present is the way that the destruction of ancient monuments instigated by the French Revolution stimulated awareness of the ‘génie du Christianisme’. The word ‘vandalisme’, Hill tells us, was first used by ...”

“... disarray, and some of his fellow officers believed that a military coup might be in the nation’s best interests. Again in 1796, as he neared the end of his second term as president, Washington opted for retirement rather than another four years of executive office, so setting a precedent for the regular rotation of the presidency that survived until Franklin ...”

“... surprising. For Ondaatje’s voice is Almasy’s, Almasy’s style Ondaatje’s, a style which at best generates things of real beauty, at worst creates effects of trompe-l’oeil which make us suspect that there is less to what we read than meets the ...”