“... rescuing locked-out housewives by clambering up and letting them in. It’s not news that writers may write their meta-novels in a non-linear way. It’s not the continuity of a story that startles you in the move between ‘Joe Laughed’ and Kieron Smith, Boy, published a decade apart, but the continuity of a stylistic arc. The existence of this pre-written ...”

“... its repression, the refugee figures rose steeply. About 18,000 refugees arrived in West Berlin in May, and nearly 12,600 in the first two weeks of July. These numbers are accepted as evidence that the GDR now faced imminent disaster, only averted by the closing of the Berlin border on 13 August. But even if the July figure had been maintained, the total for ...”

“... the Liberation’ and that was useful too, although, as Aronson points out, not quite true. He may have contributed a few ‘stories about dogs run over in the street’ but he was never a ‘member’ of Combat or any other clandestine organisation. He conceded that he was more ‘a writer who resisted’ than a ‘resister who wrote’, but as Aronson ...”

“... world, Williams’s poem promises a sympathy, and a sensory immediacy, which other kinds of poetry may lack. The aural toolkit developed by Williams was ideally suited to poems concerned with motion: cars, trains, pedestrians, runners, fire engines, gulls, robins, swallows, ‘tideless waves thundering slantwise against/ strong embankments’, a sheet of ...”

“... of thousands was then repeated in India on a large scale involving many millions of people. It may well have been such views, along with her criticisms of Zionism in 1944 and 1948, that led to Gershom Scholem’s sharp allegations against Arendt in an exchange of letters in 1963, after the publication of Eichmann in Jerusalem. Scholem called her ...”

“... mere plaything, crushed by the all-powerful gods. Aristotle, Scholasticism and Greek tragedy, it may be said, lie outside Porter’s period. Bernard de Mandeville, however, is squarely within it. Porter concludes, again too rapidly and simply, that Mandeville was opposed to Cartesian dualism, on the ground that he emphasised the close correlation of emotion ...”

“... business interests. Black senior died in 1976 by falling over the banisters at his home; he may have committed suicide – in any case, Conrad saw it happen. ‘Life is hell,’ the father told the son while they waited for medical attention. ‘Most people are bastards, and everything is bullshit.’ He died later that night. It’s no surprise to ...”

“... For a spell during the 1960s, Robert Creeley’s ‘I Know a Man’ may have been the most often quoted, even the most widely known, short poem by a living American. Here is the poem: As I sd to my friend, because I am always talking, – John, I sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur- rounds us, what can we do against it, or else, shall we & why not, buy a goddamn big car, drive, he sd, for christ’s sake, look out where yr going ...”

“... though rendered ironic by the inadequacy of the protagonists. However ‘typical’ Emma may or may not be, the patterns of behaviour she is trapped in are recognisably similar to her creator’s. Flaubert had to make life difficult for himself. After the triumph of Madame Bovary, he was determined not to be seen ...”

“... learned Virgins, where, in peace and security, he shall spend the days that remain to him to live. May destiny allow him to complete this habitation, this sweet retreat of his ancestors, which he has devoted to his liberty, his tranquillity and his leisure. At this point Montaigne had published nothing apart from a French translation of the Catalan scholar ...”

“... on the Result of Today’s Conference with the State Secretaries concerning Barbarossa’, dated 2 May 1941, just a few weeks before the invasion. It begins: ‘1. The war can only be continued if the entire armed forces are fed from Russia during the third year of the war. 2. As a result, there is no doubt that “x” million people [zig Millionen ...”

“... around outside his house in London for four days until he was taken on. He departed for Dover in May 1767, aged 18. The sea voyage was awful, as it invariably was in the 18th century (there was the seasickness, then the unpleasant possibility of having to land wherever you could if the winds were adverse). Hammond had a ‘spewing fit’ before they were ...”

“... large amounts of money into the national economy. Such unconventional monetary policies may have prevented a depression, but they have been widely criticised for their distributional consequences: by inflating asset prices, quantitative easing has helped the well-off, but hurt people with smaller savings and pensions. These are trade-offs that ...”

“... to an American diplomat, the result ‘astounded the French Cameroonians’. The Anglophones may have feared being ‘swamped’ by the Francophones, but they were also wary of the Igbo ethnic group across the border in the Eastern Region of Nigeria. This mistrust may well have swung the vote. Then, as now, the Igbos ...”

“... bosses dined early with their families in ersatz châteaux and the legendary jazz scene – Truman may have heard Charlie Parker live – was a middle-class affair found in labour union halls rather than bordellos. Two Irish gangs, the Goats and the Rabbits, fought for control of the city. Tom Pendergast, the cunning, sickly boss of the Goats, ran his ...”