“... matter of time, the history of time itself has been remarkably little studied. The concept of time may be hard to grasp, but the measurement and perception of it have been fundamental to all civilisations, and especially to Western Europe, the most time-conscious society of all time. Along with the stirrup, gunpowder and the printing press, the mechanical ...”

“... than taking responsibility and growing up, as Pinocchio does at the end of Collodi’s book). This may be hokum, but it’s also deeply affecting. As Steven Spielberg recognised in his SF version of Pinocchio, A.I., the only way to crank up the pathos still further is to remove Geppetto’s love. In A.I., an android boy, David, is offered as a child ...”

“... Narnia is enjoying a resurgence in Harry’s wake.Events at Columbine High School last year may explain the reaction of some American parents who have opposed the Harry Potter books. The students who shot and killed their classmates said they were out to get the school bullies, and were themselves part of a widespread teen cult inspired to some degree ...”

“... and confessions piled on top of one another in marketplaces and town halls. This pluralism may be more important for the fact that no one thought it was an issue. Much of modern European history turns on the ‘discovery’ of that pluralism (in its political, legal and demographic forms) as a problem, and varied attempts to solve it. The diagnosis and ...”

“... gave the novel its original title in French, Dans le jardin de l’ogre, and awkward though it may be, it conveys the novel’s atmosphere of danger and debasement. The English title feels like a compromise reached after a long editorial meeting in which no one could agree on what the novel was actually about. This is not the first time Slimani’s titles ...”

“... was the more forceful personality, but the London organisation yielded the early results: May the Twelfth, a collage of reported impressions of Britain on the day of George VI’s coronation, and Britain: By Mass-Observation, a compilation of reactions to the Munich crisis, which was published by Penguin in January 1939 and sold 100,000 copies in ten ...”

“... when she won – these reviews are the literary equivalent. A profile with the title ‘Why Now May (Finally) Be Meg Wolitzer’s Moment’ seemed to forget that this is a New York Times-bestselling author who has had three novels adapted for film and television, including one directed by her mentor Nora Ephron (The Female Persuasion has just been ...”

“... By ‘shorts’ she’s probably not thinking of him dressed as a Hitler Youth but Kempowski may have been, if only as a naughty joke. Grass didn’t own up to his Nazi past until 2006 and even his biographer claimed to know nothing about it. Kempowski can’t have known about it till then either but in the interview he gave shortly before his ...”

“... The Literary Brat Pack was a journalistic readymade, roping together a number of writers who may have scarcely known each other and treating them as a floating soirée. It was cartoonish and unfair to most of the individuals involved, but the thing about catchphrases is that once they click, they stick. And for a brief spell, Jay and Bret obliged the ...”

“... or not her Stalin statue had a thigh for her to press her cheek against. It’s about whether she may have submitted a bit too readily to Anglo-American publishing imperatives that want stories of far-off places served with a spoonful of kitsch. The opening sentence of Wild Swans (‘At the age of fifteen, my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord ...”

“... initiated a correspondence with Zukofsky and two years later went to New York to meet him. It may have been her first time any distance from home. Here is George Oppen’s wife, Mary, on meeting Niedecker in New York in 1934: We invited her to dinner, and after waiting for her until long after dinner time, we ate and were ready for bed when a timid knock ...”

“... soldiers screaming abuse at him and taking pictures, before shackling and forcibly shaving him. It may have been a yearning for coherence amid these conflicting signals that drove Begg to embrace Islamic religious practice so intensely. From the evidence in the book, it’s not clear. He is not a mystic; he doesn’t enter into the religious transports which ...”

“... school linked with mine was always known simply as the Boy from Chick. The hanging incident was in May. Two months later, the press arrived again. On Tuesday 13 July, the Metropolitan Police raided a house in Lees Holm, a mixed area between mostly Asian Savile Town and mostly white Thornhill Edge. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7 July bombers, had ...”

“... the disease so lightly that they are unaware of it – and unaware of the lasting damage the virus may have done to the motor neurones which control their muscles. In Cork, a compact city of some 75,000 inhabitants, the total of those affected must have been at least 50,000. And all those attacked became for a time carriers of the infection. In August that ...”

“... and the bass playing.’ Some original fans of the young Scritti Politti and post-punk generally may have equally mixed feelings, for different reasons, about their undomesticated, once obscure music being tamed and repackaged in compilations. Compressed into an hour, the shocks and stop-start pace of these bands’ careers lose some of their allure. The ...”