“... and navy blue of the Caribbean as you would if you turned round and looked behind you. Palm Island may be bigger than Primrose Hill, but I think London Zoo would spill over into the sea if it was moved here. Mostly, what the handful of people staying here do is lie breathtakingly still in the sun and watch big white boats with tall triangular sails go by ...”

“... two won’t let the other play any more. Glover is the boy who was left out in the cold, which may be felt to colour his version of events. If he’d chosen to reveal in 1989 what he chooses to reveal now about himself and his co-founders Matthew Symonds and Andreas Whittam-Smith he might have found recruits hard to come by. Comparing his book with my own ...”

“... by human beings. Padel also suggests that the use of animal metaphors to describe mental states may derive from a literal belief in the possibility that animals, or at least certain animals, have access to a kind of knowledge unavailable to human beings. In particular, animals that were able to move in ways different to humans were thought to have a direct ...”

“... deal of dignity, and acts as an able critic of human ‘overcapacity in the brain box’ which may account for our self-destructive goings on. And there is some real fun to be had out of the three men in the boat, the Alice pastiche, and the way it’s played off against the dubiously real world of the early Nineties. The Victorian FitzRoy is done with ...”

“... for a referendum. Indeed, the explanation for the pollsters’ overestimate of the PQ vote may well lie in the Party’s soft support among Francophones, who go with the crowd in their general rhetoric, but are not prepared for the implications of separation. Moreover, it all depends on what question is asked. Support for ...”

“... editors and place and date of publication, however, we have to work back to a note on page 163. It may seem trifling to mention this in a work of such outstanding erudition but Goldthwaite makes very big claims which need to be carefully checked. We read, for example, that at the beginning of the 16th century the raw materials imported into Italy from the ...”

“... city’. Nothing is spared her wrath. She says the Cambodian people cannot have confidence in the May 1993 elections because the country was not entirely free of political murders. She gets many small and large details wrong, from calling a key American representative a senator to claiming that opening up Cambodia to the outside world only ‘serves ...”

“... gets sent to Berlin, as a veteran flag-waver representing Limbach, for the Deutschlandtreffen of May 1939. He is driven up in a propaganda truck ‘like a beribboned ox to the gate’ (Grandmother). The outcome is unexpected. Once in Berlin, he can’t resist going to a really big cinema, the Gloria Palais. By the time he gets to the rally his flag has ...”

“... persons) of colour’, but, as Gates predicts, the original ‘coloured people’ may well make a return, if coined in the correct quarters. In any case, Gates introduces himself as not ‘Everynegro’: I want to be black, to know black, to luxuriate in whatever I might be calling blackness at any particular time – but to do so in order to ...”

“... in us.’ No folie de grandeur here, only an obsessive, mournful modesty: what we didn’t betray may not have been there anyway. Acrimony has a fine epigraph from Rilke, all about the unmeasured or the disproportionate, and how it piles up and hurls itself at us (‘so sehr ist überall das Ungemässe / und häuft sich an und stürzt sich uns ...”

“... maybe more scared than the boy. And not knowing I was the mountain to be scaled.’ Everyone may sometimes wonder what it’s like to be a member of the opposite sex: what Swan describes best is the giddiness of suddenly having the roles reversed. I remember my own rage and confusion aged six when two boys and their sister came to tea. My brother, 18 ...”

“... Had we done something, our son would still be with us.’ The man spoke for the first time. ‘You may want to know why I haven’t complained about my son’s disappearance.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s not our business to dig into such personal matters.’ ‘I’ll tell you, though. I’m a colonel in the Argentinian army ... I will appreciate your ...”

“... well, direct in his opinions and so willing to share them with his colleagues, however senior they may be ... We are already hard-pressed to teach 21 writers in the time we allot this paper. If Joyce goes in, what comes out?’   ‘Flecker,’ answered Pran without a moment’s hesitation.   Professor Mishra laughed indulgently. ‘Ah, Dr Kapoor, Dr ...”

“... of his hilarity and contempt. They do not forgive him, however cleverly and enthusiastically they may have admired and dissected his poems; and publication of the letters and biography gives them a chance to show it. The only comment on the subject which Larkin himself seems to have thoroughly approved of, and quotes in a letter, was by Clive James in his ...”

“... title story, is brutal in its casualness. One day’s entry, in its entirety: Thursday 6th May ... made two trips with the yawl for water and rice. Canoes brought 6 loads of wood. Got on board 4000 lbs of rice, dry and in good order, all hands filled more than 5 butts. Have near 7 tons of rice in good order. One more turn of water and wood in the ...”