“... endured an uphill struggle. His book has been fairly extensively rubbished in this country, which may not be wholly unconnected with the fact that Langguth is an American. For a Yank to invade this most English of territories was clearly an act of colossal cheek, and the bounder obviously deserved the wigging he got. But, actually, hang it all, you ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... permanently. It gets no food from us and apparently none from anyone else. I am fearful that it may die on me. I should look foolish indeed with a dead cat on my hands and no idea who it belongs to. I have courteously conveyed the suggestion that it should go away. No luck so ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... and was awarded the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 1952. The success of The Sea around Us may have had something to do with the growing anxieties of a public entering the Cold War and the Korean crisis. As Lear points out, the ocean was seen as America’s best line of defence and it is interesting that the best-seller lists of the time were dominated ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Arrival in the 16th century is signalled by a mistiness of documentation, a mistiness which may be intended to convey the quality of dream. Jessica notices ‘humble working people’ and ‘magnificently dressed aristocrats’. On the Rialto she spots ‘shops of every description’ – shops which aren’t described. Celebrities figure ...”

“... have other diplomatic interests in these countries, and if we alienate them over drugs, we may be sorry when we need them for something else a few years later.” ’ In 1984, Thailand, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Belize, Burma and Jamaica – all countries receiving US economic and other assistance – actually increased their drug-producing ...”

“... on the one hand, and a bogus progressiveness, on the other. Having repudiated both of these, they may acquire a certain soundness of outlook. There is, however, something a little arid about the schoolmaster’s prescription for fulfilment. In Brown’s sea valley, small events take on an epic significance, like the feud between ‘the crofts of Gorse and ...”

“... a sufferer, as if even in the Eighties, kingship’s healing magic might still somehow work. It may be too much too late, but no one can blame the Government for not trying. It’s only in one’s more paranoid moments that one seems to glimpse a ghastly connivance between the socio-sexual effects of Aids and the avowed Thatcherite intent to reinstate good ...”