“... is understandably respectful of the memory of a remarkable young scientist, but the general reader may well prefer the light and air of the chapter on ‘Scenes, Shapes and Images’ to the somewhat oppressive orthodoxy of the preceding two chapters on vision. Part Three, on learning, memory and action, is admirably even-handed in its coverage of current ...”

“... But in 1961 came the final and unimagined insult to Berlin: the erection of the Wall. Glasnost may mean little as yet in Berlin, but it is useful to be reminded, forty years on, of what the Cold War was like at its frostiest. The authors of The Berlin Blockade are to be congratulated on their wide-ranging research, leavened by such piquancies as the ...”

“... research strategies’ to reveal colonial anxieties and obsessions. His charges may be technically valid, but they are a little ungenerous. After all, Bailyn noted that what made the Revolution ‘so profoundly a transforming event’ was the ‘intimate relationship between Revolutionary thought and the circumstances of life in 18th-century ...”

“... To make so ill-considered a remark under the momentary influence of the crowd’s euphoria may not look like the tactics of a great media manipulator. But Chamberlain was already sensing the opposition to what he had done and the remark was the start of a losing struggle against it. For two years he had effectively stifled all divergent views on Europe ...”

“... get Gustav and Walter – you never did falter – With Gustav and Walter and Franz. Franz Werfel may not have been quite up to the standard of Gustav Mahler or the architect Walter Gropius, but at the time of their first meeting in 1917 he was a hot literary property – and again in 1941 when he wrote the somewhat yukky Song of Bernadette, which became a ...”

“... all makes for fiction very different from the kind being written by other Indian writers. Bhaskar may be a Communist, like Picture Singh in Midnight’s Children or Velutha in The God of Small Things, but all he does is deliver the Party newspaper and take part in the street theatre that his unit organises, one or two-act plays which ‘possessed solemn ...”

“... humankind, and fruitility is what I call the fate which falls upon us all. Meaningless our lives may be but blessed with deep fruitility. It could take pages if I list all the joys of the fruitilitist: Retsina and grilled squid in Greece, that death-bed cut-out of Matisse I chanced on on a trip to Dallas, Sempre libera sung by Callas, love-making in the ...”

“... admitted by lottery. Another project, known as Paradise Beyond Paradise, is also mentioned; this may involve escaping into germ-free outer space. Unfortunately, a group led by Mr Moorcraft, the Head Engineer, has embezzled the funds for this project. Mr Moorcraft has now disappeared. No one asks how the conspirators could possibly have evaded the omnipresent ...”

“... quest was for the limited options and distinct boundaries an island provides. Yet however much she may rhapsodise about her love for the place, it is the landscape of her own body which dominates this book. By its alterations she gauges what is happening to her. Its sensations dictate her morality. Ironically, the pair’s marital difficulties are only ...”

“... Patron of Letters, on matters of copyright, royalties, serial rights. Historians of publishing may well find this material useful, but it is impossible not to agree with Mr Davies in lamenting the want of livelier mail from the more stirring years, when Conrad was wandering about the world, gun-running, or even attempting suicide. Becoming a writer instead ...”

“... is insufficient to sustain a conclusion the author feels no obligation to concoct one, though he may suggest possibilities. Every assertion is anchored to references of full length and perfect clarity. Professor Woolrych undertakes the investigation of four major problems. Why did Cromwell dissolve the Rump? Were the aims of the army officers the same in ...”

“... something remarkably familiar about the tone of the book. The voice that speaks from these pages may seem to echo the voices of Western feminists and socialists of the last century, the Pankhursts and the Webbs: it is a voice which seems old-fashioned now in England but which, encountered in this book, commands respect. The feminism of Senegal – a society ...”

“... that not because I assume that you are feeling anything like envy, but because I suspect that you may be regarding my new existence and personality with some contempt. Don’t. I have not made things easier for myself. Happiness, my happiness, is to a great extent experience [Erlebnis], movement, insight, torment; it is akin not so much to peace as to ...”

“... Half-belief is formally honoured in a visit to the tomb of Unamuno in Salamanca, but doubts may occur at any time: ‘How is it that when I speak of belief, I become aware always of a shadow, the shadow of disbelief haunting my belief?’ and ‘I am riddled by doubts. I am sure of nothing, not even of the existence of God ... Oh, I want to believe that ...”

“... singular mourners of Jude’s creator. The funeral was in January 1928. It now occurs to me that I may be the last survivor of those who attended it. At any rate I am the only one who has set down his impressions of this macabre occasion. Hitler became German Chancellor just over fifty years ago, on 30 January 1930. Nearly every historian-journalist has had a ...”