“... about Anne Radcliffe or Matthew Lewis rather than Shakespeare, and readers of Bishop’s study may be similarly surprised to learn that ‘the figure of the Virgin Mother’ is ‘Shakespeare’s deepest presider over the scene of reunion’. It would be a mistake, nonetheless, to overlook Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder. Bishop close-reads ...”

“... of the composer, has dismissed the entire affair as a fabrication on Thomson’s part, and Blondel may be too ready to accept the story at face value. (Butts also refers to an otherwise unnoticed affair with Wyndham Lewis, a man not known for discretion.) Yet Butts and Thomson seem to have developed a real and lasting affection. Well into the Seventies, he ...”

“... and intellectual? If so, those who connected the text with the detailed analysis of works of art may once again have assumed what they could not prove. The problem here is simple. One cannot determine the purpose of documents like Della pittura and its Preface, or the needs they served, without referring to the larger genres to which they belonged. And that ...”

“... itself was losing its historical momentum. There are pages in Alison Macleod’s book where she may seem too hard on both herself and her workmates, and the USSR. ‘The economic triumphs of socialism’ might be overstated, but they were not all fables, or the USSR would not have won the war. What on earth was the matter with us all, to make us unable to ...”

“... of exhaustion’ – the exhaustion of ‘the philosophy of consciousness’. Habermas may be the best critic these philosophers have yet had – the most understanding and imaginative, if also the most implacable. Further, the drama Habermas unfolds in this richly-textured and vibrantly polemical book is likely, for accidental reasons, to become ...”

“... A figurehead is needed to resolve a case like Pierre Loanga’s, but the Commissioner in Basoko may not be up to it; he may fear to act in case he is contradicted by a senior man, or merely a bigger man – the General, say, on one of his excursions from Kinshasa. It’s easier to refer up into the sullen reaches of ...”

“... wasn’t a diplomat, didn’t make a run for it and has indeed lived in France since 1952. He may not even have been an Apostle! He was a working-class lad from Scotland, a scholar and – guess what? – a believing Communist. Where does this leave the celebrated hothouse that created ‘the climate of treason’?Cairncross knew all about the climate of ...”

“... all ideologies, including fogeyism, must initially be synthesised by the educated, a process which may then be misrepresented as wilful ‘forging’, ‘dreaming up’ etc. However, an ideology which has convulsed the world must be more than wilful. At this deeper level it is nationalism which has invented modern intellectuals. Their prehistory lay in the ...”

“... when the civilian government of Sierra Leone was sworn in. The end of military dictatorship may turn out to be a modest, short-lived gain, or it may not. In any case, it would not be a significant change, in Kaplan’s olympian perspective. Reportage can be informed by scepticism, it can probe, and disbelieve, but in ...”

“... seemed to be reflected in the angry disarray of contemporary Irish political opinion. Yeats may have wished to avoid conflict with the out-and-out separatists, and to preserve literature from politics, but it turned out that this could not be done, at least by him. He wanted self-government for Ireland, but was sure that more than that was needed if the ...”

“... comrades, their cause your cause. Sex, always wildly liberated by catastrophe and insurrection, may well be one of these emotional bonds obscuring the category difference between reporter and reported. But then, as the story dies down or the desk loses interest, the day comes when you must kiss these wonderful friends goodbye. The taxi waits, about to take ...”

“... had written a charming letter to Aleksander. ‘As far as I know,’ says Bodman Rae, ‘they may have corresponded occasionally until the architect’s death.’Back in Paris, Messiaen resumed his weekly duties at the Church of La Sainte Trinité: 10 o’clock High Mass – accompanied plain-chant only; 11 o’clock Mass – Frescobaldi, Bach or romantic ...”

“... while waiting for Gallimard to publish his two books – which they did, to great acclaim, in May 1942. As his health deteriorated he was treated by a Jewish doctor – the Pétain regime had not extended its Jewish round-ups to Algeria – and, though his previous Communist career caused him to be more careful than he had been, he was never very ...”

“... tunes. ‘Mother, child and the piano quickly became a unity,’ Ostwald writes, adding that this may be ‘the origin of Glenn’s future posture while playing. His need to be very close to the piano would recall the warm feelings and earlier proximity of both mother and instrument.’ Soon the child had perfect pitch, but he also developed peculiar ...”

“... he asked for the only halfway house left: ‘at least give us a salon des refusés.’ The Salon may have atrophied, but not everything died. In Salon paintings one finds the seed of the visual styles of much cinema, book illustration, advertising and, indeed, photography. Sometimes things come full circle. Eurotrash, a TV programme that specialises in the ...”