“... are as much at home in Jane Austen’s dressing-room as are Dostoevsky and Scott Fitzgerald. This may be all to the good, though it leads him to such remarks as that Elizabeth Bennet’s ‘gay resilience in a society tending always towards dull conformity would make her a worthy heroine in a Stendhal novel, which cannot be said for many English ...”

“... Verse, like coins, mint strictly, precisely, honestly. Follow the rule stubbornly: So that words may be compact, Thoughts – expansive... How then does Mackay Brown go about his new-minting process? In the first place, he uses the opportunities of narrative to return the figurative to the concrete. Scarcely have we had the disquisition on the worn state of ...”

“... criticism of Israel is excessive, the earlier adulation was, and that an answer to present woes may be found in the history of Zionism, including the period just before the birth of the state described in Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ and David Cesarani’s Major Farran’s Hat. Both books deal with the ...”

“... But anyone who expects a full and informed debate and a vote that reflects public opinion may be disappointed. There are several reasons. David Cameron, who is known to be opposed to the measure, has declined to make parliamentary time – i.e. time allocated by the government whips – available for it. This means ...”

“... Because it’s there’ may be sufficient motive for the intrepid, but many are disheartened by the laborious hours needed to reach a position even to attempt an assault on Finnegans Wake. For such timid aspirants and for those in the early stages of fascination, Roland McHugh’s book, presenting information gathered by earlier explorers (including himself), will save months of preparatory toil ...”

“... back of the American century’. Libra is DeLillo’s ninth novel, his first historical novel. It may be that the discipline of fixing his imagination on a specific controlling event has been a help to him, for Libra is certainly his best book – better than White Noise, his grim, death-haunted and very funny satire on consumer society, and better than The ...”

“... in the March Dail elections, when they polled around 1.9 per cent of the vote, the walk-out may have been premature. The convention also took several decisions which had important consequences for the military campaign in Northern Ireland. Out went several ‘dual membership’ people (who belonged both to Sinn Fein and to the IRA), and into key ...”

“... found.’ Saying what the truth of one’s life was, and curating the manner of its glorification, may well be the last big decisions in a life of indecision. When my father died, his dream of posterity blossomed, and the things he wanted to be true about himself suddenly found theatrical expression. He was never politically active, but the route to his ...”

“... In​ August 2006 I visited an architect friend called David Martin who lived near the town of Montignac in the Dordogne. He was in the middle of a complicated job converting the interior of a nearby château, which had been acquired by a wealthy Japanese client. One evening he produced a large and rather dirty wooden crate ...”

“... settle for being remembered for what was said to them as opposed to what they said themselves. David Livingstone went through hell before arriving at Lake Tanganyika in October 1871, but his stories about that journey would never enter the language the way Stanley’s would, when he caught up with him at Ujiji. Fourteen years earlier Livingstone had given ...”

“... is illegally presented with a birthday cake. A Tory staffer throws up as the exit poll drops. David Cameron keeps his bladder full all night to achieve maximum focus during EU negotiations. The Bank of England takes emergency action to stave off financial panic following the ‘mini-budget’. David Bowie implores ...”

“... Just under forty years ago David Erdman provided for William Blake historical contexts in abundance in Blake: Prophet against Empire (1954). It was a remarkable work of literary detection, which still dominates the field. Some Blake readers have felt that his attribution of correspondence between text and contemporaneous events was over-literal (as well as hazardous), and Jon Mee is one of these ...”

“... to visit the animals: ‘Meet your brothers, take them to your hearts and respect them.’ But as David Hancocks colourfully describes, most precursors of the modern zoo have been the opposite of this, from the circuses of Rome to the travelling menageries of the 18th and 19th centuries, shuttered in so that passers-by got no free view; and as he says (and I ...”

“... where of them’? Was she not manifestly a writer ‘for whom places loom large’? The problem may have been that place in itself does not loom large in the novels and stories. Bowen’s North Cork is not a mythical terrain like Hardy’s Wessex. What matters, rather, is a relation of person to place – created as much in expectation and memory as in ...”

“... older books, was hardly read outside the universities, and reported a drop in enrolments. David Lehman’s Signs of the Times similarly notes the ‘disquieting fact that the number of students electing to major in literature has steadily declined over the last twenty years’. The question of ‘theory’ is bound up with this, since, in Lehman’s ...”