“... book, part self-revelation, part art object. Now, some thirty years on, she has assembled what may be its culmination. Honey from a Weed is less a cookery book than a summing-up of the genre of the late modern British cookery book. It is a book like very few others, although it has some of the style of the 17th-century commonplace book, replete with ...”

“... of food vouchers worth £35 a week. ‘Many asylum seekers come from communities where wealth may be stored in jewellery,’ explains the Home Office minister Mike O’Brien, ‘and it is right for us to take account of that wealth.’ ‘Is the minister suggesting,’ asks Diane Abbott MP, ‘that asylum seekers should sell their jewellery, perhaps their ...”

“... of the Cold War it is time to start again. None of the old assumptions applies any longer. Russia may be difficult to deal with but it is not an enemy: we have relatively normal relations with it. The US now has strategic nuclear primacy over Russia: its chances of disabling Russian nuclear forces with a first strike are estimated at more than 90 per ...”

“... brutal, irreverent message had got through, they laughed and laughed. Unlike his two successors, David Steel and Paddy Ashdown, Thorpe was, in fact, a pretty considerable Commons performer. His natural habitat, though, was the platform and, after he became Party leader in 1967, his annual address at what was still then called the Liberal Assembly took its ...”

“... process, the first portrayer of society in terms that Adam Smith might and Karl Marx did approve. David Brown makes the academic case admirably. He begins by modestly disclaiming originality: he is developing insights put forward by others in recent years, and only applying them more carefully to a selection of the major novels. This is a service which it ...”

“... Its new headquarters, designed by Renzo Piano in elegant steel and glass, opened in Chelsea last May. For many months a cultural beacon in uptown Manhattan was dimmed, and the architectural dialogue between the inverted grey ziggurat of the Whitney on Madison Avenue and the expansive white spiral of the Guggenheim on Central Park, another masterpiece of late ...”

“... the artist Rachel Lichtenstein, is one of Sinclair’s most straightforward and absorbing books. David Rodinsky lived above a synagogue at 19 Princelet Street, Whitechapel until he disappeared in 1969. The contours of his life are revealed by the obscure maps, notes, books, clothes and dust that he left behind. But you can see Rodinsky only if you look away ...”

“... to tap deep feelings within the community, to command authority, awe or respect’. Much as we may admire Haseler’s command of rhetoric, we are given no reason why his assessment of the attitude of typical Labour voters should be preferred to that of his fellow ‘populist’ Tony Benn, who reads the electorate’s mind in diametrically opposite ...”

“... Iran, he is inclined to overlook such nuggets of truth as lie buried within them. For example, it may be sloppy and misleading to describe Iranians as having a ‘martyr complex’, but one cannot deny that martyrdom has a central role in the religious and popular culture of the Iranian people, and that this has had some impact on their political ...”

“... They cannot, season by season, startle with new patterns of fur or feathers. People can.We may, snake-like, shed worn-out clothes; we may become bored, disgusted or embarrassed by the way we look. Or, better, we may decide to be inventive, emulative and playful. But whether new ...”

“... the way for the IRA ceasefire of August 1994. The programmes give most of the credit to Hume, whom David Trimble also praises in one of the articles in To Raise up a New Northern Ireland: it was thanks to Hume’s redefinition of Irish nationalism, Trimble says, that ‘a common ground, where dialogue might take place’, could be found. In retrospect Hume’s ...”

“... interpretations advanced by other scholars and critics. But however unusual this volume may look in comparison with the kind of ambitiously interpretative catalogue we have become used to, it is entirely characteristic of the series of catalogues of major exhibitions of 18th and early 19th-century British artists held at the Tate in the last seven ...”

“... youth. The trouble with such package deals is that when one item loses its authority the believer may throw out the whole lot, bag and baggage, baby and bathwater: he may rush to the opposite extreme, seeking out illiberal values to embrace with a fervour that embarrasses old conservatives. Bill Hooper, the hero of The Good ...”

“... flak as well. That it was Carter who chose him is the real significance of his appointment, which may be the reason Caryl doesn’t include him: he doesn’t represent a clean enough break. Carter didn’t turn to Volcker because the public was demanding tough medicine. He did it because Wall Street wanted the medicine, and the public no longer had the ...”

“... of Christianity, together with a large portion – all but the prophetic and poetical books, if David Daniell is correct, as he almost certainly is, in attributing to Tyndale the translation he prints of Joshua to II Chronicles – of the Old Testament. Tyndale’s translation lies at the base of almost all subsequent English renderings, the Authorised ...”