“... Clifford, Kingsley, Newman, Dr Martineau, Mill, Matthew Arnold – he docketed them all.’ It may be thought that Hutton was somehow too solid, too Olympian in his criticism, too unfaultable, to be endearing or to engage our full attention. He measures his subjects against a standard which seems always just beyond reach of their best efforts. Even ...”

“... story of actual crime, but a work of literary fiction.’ Dismissing the work, he says that ‘we may be interested by the spectacle of life imitating bad art, but not by bad art (i.e. over-familiar, exhausted conventions) proposing to imitate life.’ But his review of the matter confounds virtually every critical issue raised by ...”

“... these things tend to do, in perhaps three or four years’ time. And perhaps by that time, too, we may have learned the reasons for the bizarre decision taken by Neil Kinnock and the Labour Party Executive. So far, we have been given no reason for the decision. Was it the fear of being accused of setting up some kind of Zhdanovite Ministry of Culture? Why then ...”

“... which he finds in Victorian Liberalism will obviously not be to everyone’s taste. Some may find the Gladstonian view of politics too optimistic altogether. But it gets a good airing here, and one which shows the subject to be full of interest and ...”

“... forgotten – such public utterances of the composer’s as his notorious Pravda article of 31 May 1964, in which 12-tone and serial music were devaluated in terms which no Stalin, no Zhdanov could have improved upon: the tone-row ‘was one or the great evils of 20th-century art’. And come to look for it, there is not a word about dodecaphony in the ...”

“... of a thing with itself is shown its original doubling.’ The ‘original doubling’ of what? May Wittgenstein be saved from such clarification! Too often Brand reads Wittgenstein exactly backwards. For example, Brand says: ‘One cannot speak without thinking and one cannot think without speaking. If I think, I am speaking internally.’ He cites ...”

“... ghosts, especially at night.’ And as he meditates on his own value, he concludes: ‘My talent may be of copper not of gold ... but I have put it to the best use I could.’ He arranged that his epitaph describe him as one ‘Who with a humble heart strove to serve his country’. I think he’d be pleased to know that he’s done so by inventing the ...”

“... Did they perhaps fake their enthusiasm? Or was the world simply fresher then? Today’s travellers may claim a greater truthfulness by reporting their blisters and their ennui: though interestingly they also deploy a wider variety of fiction-based techniques to convey that truth (this used to be called ‘making it up’). And as they press themselves upon us ...”

“... and ‘Is not’, ‘So’ and ‘Not so’ are smoothed away. Such Taoist doctrines may have proved productive in other fields of science – in atomic physics, for example, where irreconcilable notions about the nature of matter have apparently been resolved by the discovery of quantum field theory – but they are not what is most obviously ...”

“... manager that drives them mad. It’s going on television that really does it. Perhaps, then, we may modestly envision a quieter role for the England manager of the future: more cloistered, more thoughtful, more bookish. Under no circumstances, however, should the Boss be left alone with Desmond Morris’s new work: he would almost certainly go mad, or else ...”

“... Six weeks later: ‘If my health gets better and there is a war – it is not off the cards that I may go to Spain.’ Two weeks later: ‘I sometimes dream of returning to England for a short time.’ The next month: ‘It is more than probable that I shall go up into Greece.’ Although Byron didn’t know it when he wrote the last sentence, he had already ...”

“... learning, judgment, wit and literary sophistication with which Manuel builds up his case. But it may suggest reasons for thinking this much the most stimulating book on Newton and his science which we have. Manuel makes it abundantly clear that he is not ‘explaining’ Newton’s genius, but only the outward forms in which this genius was expressed. Work ...”

“... of typically idiosyncratic anarchism. He dies. It was an extreme sort of v-sign but the reader may come to feel Katz deserved it. The author’s certainty of his own importance to the Fassbinder story is such that he forces us to witness his book’s moment of creative inspiration. You would tend not to ask a biographer where he got the idea for a project ...”

“... Jim Dixon. For anyone who has actually worked at the BL, the sequence of events and topography may be plausible enough, but the pace is nothing short of absurd. Things, interesting things at least, simply don’t happen that fast in that place. But Williams is a narrator in a hurry and plausibility goes overboard. On the strength of his single day’s ...”

“... combination of ‘alla’ found in the name of his foster-father, or observes that Roderick Usher may have got his surname from Noble Lake Usher, who often performed opposite Poe’s parents Daniel and Eliza. As Silverman shows more clearly than any earlier biographer, everything in Poe’s life leads back to his blighted childhood and youth. He was probably ...”