“... the extraordinary childrearing procedures to which she was subjected. Yet even if a shipwreck may sometimes be salutary for those who survive it, it is not an experience to be indulged in if it can be avoided. Catherine’s upbringing does not provide a model for others. Bateson’s handling of the Freeman affair is much more stylish than Howard’s, and ...”

“... stance which was precious to her. Through the laburnums and the net curtains, she said, ‘you may snuff the quick-witted high-lying life of a suburban community.’ Her heart went out to all she saw and overheard of the lonely, the peculiar, the poisonously nice, the fatally well-intentioned, and to those misplaced in life who, respectable to all ...”

“... on the other, as probably it is. This is not the first instance we have seen in modern history. It may be that the political options are so inexorably black and white that the right public choice seems to subsume all the private virtues. But such a vision excludes the accidents, the mixture of motives, the inherited irrationalities that are the normal ...”

“... these literary aspects. You must be awfully good in your field.’ The literary aspects of Pinball may be illustrated thus... Style: ‘ “What’s more, I’m an insomniac!” ‘Macbeth has murdered sleep,” ’ she quoted.’ Description: ‘Domostroy was guided by the auditory, and his art was music, which enlarged his spiritual world by demolishing ...”

“... and keep others at bay – tough farmers, poachers, DIY men and the like. Our Whitehall warriors may not look very impressive when – or if – they emerge from their bunkers. The American scenario in which the President and the top brass take to the air in special command aeroplanes seems more plausible. But it is a story that seems to end when the fuel ...”

“... life; yet the poems themselves have remained spare and short. What ever fits of lust or malice he may have allowed himself in the everyday world, he can justly claim that in his lyrics he has never been unfaithful to his ...”

“... rubbish he and his colleagues were obliged to churn out day by day. Here again, I think, things may well have changed for the better. For most modern Reardons, these rending scenes will instantly evoke images of Chancery Lane – or, more precisely, that small alley off the Lane where generations of book reviewers and literary men have known the confused ...”

“... meaning and the need for interpretation are so coercively suggested at almost every moment. But we may accept them as theatrical conventions, and still find something wrong here. And the trouble isn’t in the bizarre effects they achieve, but in what these are set against: the implied norms of natural behaviour. The oddities and excesses are what we ...”

“... This leads to such extraordinary statements as: ‘The bomb which disintegrated Stevie may have been a wish-fulfilment for the entire clan.’ Professor Karl’s reading of the novel strikes me as almost grotesque. In the Foreword, Karl depicts Conrad as someone who ‘found in marginality itself a way of life’, and having lighted on that word ...”

“... is real, not assumed – in other words, it is felt, whereas Bly’s has an air of calculation. It may seem strange these days to commend a poet for ‘sincerity’, but at least it’s good to know that he means what he says. Silkin speaks as directly as he can about complex states of mind, in this resembling Lawrence and the best of the First World War ...”

“... a decade of urban terrorism in Europe, “Funnies” are no longer odd men out. They may be said to have come in from the ...”

“... one side of the vault above, and this opening is matched by other, painted ones through which we may glimpse heaven and towards which the saint turns in rapture. This much Lavin, like Wittkower and Hibbard before him, emphasises. But I think that Bernini was more specific. The saint’s raised hand and tilted head suggest that she is listening, and in fact ...”

“... Only the prejudices, exacerbated by a galloping national inferiority complex, remained. In May 1979, Retribution put on its skirts and went abroad in the land. Thatcher saw herself as an economic Churchill to Macmillan’s Chamberlain. She knew that economics was not political appeasement but a branch of morality dedicated to visiting on the multitude ...”

“... is not the thing itself, as literary criticism often imagines ... but the set, of which this thing may be considered one representation, in comparison with other sets.’ So Dumézil compared the pantheons of Indo-European peoples, showing that each set of gods has a structure matching that of other such sets. It is only after identifying that structure that ...”

“... to be sensible and disciplined. But we have determination and it is possible that a situation may arise in which, irrespective of the consequences, we shall have to act against our better judgment. In the name of higher ideals and ...”