“... the cliff trottoir by easy stages I’ll dawdle with a feeling of that’s that – Great talents may write poems for the ages, But poetasters with their tongues in fetters When all else fails at least can still write ...”

“... sanitary reformers, enlightened local councillors and the odd crusading local newspaper editor, may well turn out to be one of the noblest achievements of the Victorian ...”

“... well have been Director-General in the old style. The relationship with the Board of Governors may now be easier. This Board itself, with its chairman in a position somewhere between that of a constitutional monarch and that of the President of the present French Republic, is also a relic of other times, as indeed is the notion of public service ...”

“... there were/are shorthand versions of the scripts which are no more difficult than Pittman. It may turn out to be the case that in the end the whole Chinese population will be persuaded to speak a single language, but this will be as a matter of administrative convenience rather than the technical difficulty of learning to write Chinese characters. I ...”

“... like Peter’s being that a life of complete self-indulgence, if led with the whole heart, may also bring ...”

“... superi vollent hoc licuisse sibi. They improvised translations and sipped wine. Here’s Thomas May’s then Addison’s then mine: Vesuvius, shaded once with greenest vines Where pressed grapes did yield the noblest wines; Which hill far more than Nysa Bacchus lov’d, Where satyrs once in mirthful dances mov’d, Where Venus dwelt, and better lov’d the ...”

“... made governor of the colony known as the ‘Cittie of Raleigh’. He had set out from Plymouth in May, with a party of colonists that included his daughter and her husband, to establish the settlement. They were installed at Roanoke in July and on 18 August his granddaughter Virginia was born. On 27 August White set off for England to get provisions. Those he ...”

“... of God’ early last century. The landscape painters in American Sublime (at Tate Britain until 19 May) believed, as most people did, that the Earth was God’s creation and that its bones, its visible crust, were ‘a Book of Revelations in the rock-leaved Bible of geology’. Those were the words of the pioneering geologist John Wesley Powell, who led the ...”

“... In the more complete retrospectives, you may find a corner given over to drawings the artist did as a child. Typically, they will show ships, soldiers and, especially, horses. Pictures by someone who even at seven or eight was able to get things looking right bring back memories of the children in your class who were ‘good at art ...”

“... appearance of television in the world of cinema; a nifty cultural joke and an act of memory. You may remember that a treasured artefact in the episode called ‘Twenty-Two Short Films about Springfield’ (1996) was a photograph of Sean Connery signed by Roger Moore. At one point in the big-screen film the action stops abruptly and the words ‘To be ...”

“... seen in galleries. They are as proper a place for them as the theatre is for plays. Religious art may give one pause – even non-believers can feel that an object of veneration, an altarpiece say, loses something when put in a cool well-lit place, but on the whole art stands up to the museum pretty well. For many modern painters the museum was the space they ...”

“... too much me. And, frankly, a bit loathsome.But let’s keep it light at the end. Quoting Barthes may lift the tone.Describing the gaucherie of Twombly’s hand Barthes remarks on its lightness, its inclination gradually to erase itself and fade away in a vapour of innocence. He admires the impulse ‘to link in a single state what appears and what ...”

“... Jack £223 and sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment, suspended for twelve months. In May 2008, Rizwaan Sabir was arrested on the campus of Nottingham University because he had downloaded a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website while researching his MA. The police had profiled him because he was active in supporting ...”

“... that animated Flandrin’s patrons in an age of revolution and progress, one never knows when they may rise again. Flandrin’s commission was part of a thirty-year project to repair the church after the Revolution, and was championed by Victor Hugo among others. The recent restoration is a major event which has attracted little notice. Attention is instead ...”

“... to which indigenous citizens are subjected by homeland security, corporate marketing and ISPs may be equally intense, but it is surely less insidious. Europeans now take an invasive interest in newcomers: their itinerary, their abilities and disabilities, their faith, their criminal tendencies, their likely mendacity and, of course, their loose-footed ...”