“... writes, ‘which, in the words of the Gospel, makes our eye and heart clean.’ Great stories may contain sermons and end happily; the trick’s in the weaving together. Leskov’s risky narrative choice, repeated from story to story, comes not in the dubious opposition between the anecdotal and the ideological but in the balance of suffering and ...”

“... one can pin it down no more closely than by calling it ‘anti-establishment’. Michael Frayn may have excoriated that phrase – in his brief, brilliant introduction to the published text, Beyond the Fringe, in 1963 – as denoting ‘a spacious vacancy of thought’, but really, I don’t see how we can do any better. Any real ‘establishment’ is ...”

“... the research that has been carried out into how it works. For most of us the stories from the lab may be of less interest than the wider implications: how the drugs that have been developed through it have transformed medicine. Tarantino notwithstanding, adrenaline to the heart is unlikely to save your life, but through the judicious blocking or mimicking of ...”

“... is erratic in his office work, and that his appearances abroad resemble cabaret performances, may not matter much. As the editors of The People Reloaded write, ‘Iran is a rentier state, which means it pays its bills from the sale of oil rather than through taxation. This gives the regime a significant degree of autonomy from society, which immunises it ...”

“... of his artistic ambitions, whether he’s able to realise them or not. Indeed, that earnestness may be an obstacle to their achievement, if Palo Alto is any indication. His upcoming Hollywood parts are a mixed bag: next is Your Highness, a medieval comedy in which he’ll probably be funny, followed by Rise of the Apes, a Planet of the Apes prequel that ...”

“... of course he is, as we all are) but that narration by one person of their own life may well be impossible. Lerner doesn’t just tear down the curtain between the writer and reader, as in his previous books, but allows the reader to flicker between the first and third person, to see a boy’s sentimental education as dynamic, resolving one ...”

“... At the time Washington was threatening Pakistan with sanctions for its work on the bomb, and Zia may have calculated that low-level nuclear co-operation with Iran could be used as a negotiating chip to be traded in later: the co-operation could always be ended if sanctions looked imminent, as a way of averting the threat.So the general, always adept at ...”

“... back against the occupation or pressing for membership of international organisations – they may withhold the revenue, starving the PA of funds and making it difficult to provide even minimal public services. Universities on the West Bank can usually employ visiting academics from outside Palestine for only one month before a permit is required; the ...”

“... into the definition of the word liberty, and the meaning of the starry flag which waves, as you may have heard, o’er the land of the free’. Half the slaves on the Butler plantations were included in the sale. Most were field hands, but there were also domestic servants and skilled craftsmen, among them coopers, carpenters and blacksmiths. The catalogue ...”

“... on the grounds that they reward the effort handsomely. But the same is true of manuscripts.Cotton may not have known what he had. His librarian, Richard James, labelled the manuscript: ‘Vetus poema Anglicanum in quo sub insomnii figmento multa ad religionem et mores spectantia explicantur’ (a poem in old English explaining many religious and moral topics ...”

“... on class privilege’ had been transmuted into ‘untrammelled and misogynous violence’. This may have played a part in Hayes’s disappearance from public view; certainly his dislike of self-promotion didn’t help. But in the 1950s his unsentimental prose was widely admired – especially in Britain. Angus Wilson, Julian Maclaren-Ross and Francis ...”

“... it prevents me from absorbing any knowledge into my brain.’ If such a disorder exists, it may be transmittable via text, because that’s what these stories did to me. After reading them once I couldn’t remember anything about them – the titles, the characters, structures, written in first or third person, what (if anything) happened in ...”

“... and sex, but who has not been present in the seminar rooms where these arcane matters are debated, may begin to glaze over. I’m afraid that there were moments when mine did, in spite or because of the fact that, as Lake notes in a generous acknowledgment, we have shared those seminars for the last twenty-five years. It will seem odd, as odd as Lake’s ...”

“... or humanism in the first place, he was energised as well as alarmed by the cataclysm. It may have helped to put him into a sanatorium, but it also turned his thoughts towards a constructive solution. If civilisation lay in ruins, then there was a momentous opportunity to sweep away this heap of broken images and start afresh. Or rather, start once ...”

“... Means is insistent; his repetitions, like his rhythms, are persuasive: they seem meaningful. It may be that the wax-paper factory passed by in one story manufactures the wax paper that leads to the accidental death of the arsonist. A paper factory (the same?) appears in ‘Sleeping Bear Lament’, too; the younger Sam once walked for a moment, ‘like ...”