“... the Faith, and the more ambitious one the following year which he called Triumph of the Will. She may not be the star of these (he is), but she is everything else. On the day of Triumph’s grand premiere before the Nazi big-wigs they are still dubbing the music, and guess what? ‘Despite hours of practice, neither the conductor nor Herr Windt’ – Herbert ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... pages accumulated to argue no such thing; it also brings the unknowable rather too near. Forster may not have been disingenuous in insisting he had no idea what was going on inside the Marabar Caves; he was in any case wise not to limit its implication by privileging his readership with a look. McEwan’s method, on the other hand, tells us not enough more ...”

“... Snug for Updike and his male heroes, we need to add. Alf’s writing, as the inventory above may begin to suggest, is full of delight in the evoked absurdity of things: not their transience, but their likeable (and sometimes not so likeable) battiness. Here is Alf on the Student Centre at the College where he works: ‘On the second floor, reachable by ...”

“... material (like his hero, the author was raised both in Guatemala City and suburban Boston). So we may be in for a long ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... The flash floods in Louisiana have nothing to do with us. It’s true, the day after tomorrow we may also have torrential rain, hail, sandstorms and typhoons, but we’re not going to talk about that now: the point is the weather’s going to be quite stupendous tomorrow and I suggest you get out there and enjoy the fine sight of the autumn leaves.’ It was ...”

“... his generation’ and terms like ‘Don Quixote’ have become labels almost universally used. He may be right, but it is worth remarking that Orwell’s friends took a different view of the obituary at the time. Almost every admiring phrase seems to contain its implicit qualification, so that Orwell was not just the conscience but the wintry conscience of ...”

“... National Guard, run at the time by that friend of America, Colonel Noriega. The Shah’s friends may have proved generally faithless, but he had shown himself to be more than equally perfidious. Having attempted to appease the anger of the Qom mullahs by imprisoning his urbane Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda, the Shah flew out of Tehran without bothering ...”

“... in the ordinary sense. What people make up about their parents and their childhood may – and often does – involve occasional early and late fantasies concerning adoption, members of the aristocracy surreptitiously making deals with those purporting to be one’s father and mother, lost siblings ... But more often there seems to be a subdued ...”

“... destitution, or its schizoid sexual morality, or just the improving works of Samuel Smiles? We may never know, but there is more than a suspicion that the distinctly unpolymathic chemist/lawyer/housewife was just embroidering on a few simplistic items of Grantham family folklore. No matter that the nation relearns morality from such dubious sources. Other ...”