“... debonair capriciousness gets reduced to a shrugging jemenfoutisme. These precious, vapid fumblings may well have conformed to his personal creed of ‘sincerity’, but they dissipate the exhibition’s energy level. Somewhere in between, however, a portrait might record a painter’s debates with himself. The head of Henri Rochefort – another, edgier, more ...”

“... functions as a formal conclusion that makes any further discussion or elaboration superfluous. Mao may be 30 per cent bad, but he continues to be celebrated as the founding father of the nation, his body in a mausoleum and his image on every banknote. In a clear case of fetishistic disavowal, everyone knows that Mao made errors and caused immense ...”

“... In Tuscany, ceremonies of betrothal reminded those present of the life of Mary and Joseph, another May/December union. The domain of these Young Wives was entirely domestic: they were certainly never to venture out on their own. A form of purdah prevailed: respectable women stayed indoors, and covered their hair and faces in public. The Young Wife is ...”

“... life, things became easier. The success of the musical allowed her to tell an interviewer: ‘You may refer to me as an authoress who sometimes strips.’ And anyway, she was now too old to take off her clothes. She became a chat-show host (which failed because she hogged the conversation) and a regular on Hollywood Squares: a mainstream success of ...”

“... Lieven takes pains to show just how conditional and limited the Straits question was. Dostoevsky may have seen Constantinople as the linchpin of a massive civilisational conflict between East and West, but Russian statesmen understood that gaining permanent access to the Mediterranean still meant having to reckon with Gibraltar and Suez, both controlled by ...”

“... clear enough: ‘No, it’s not, you’re right.’ This is not quite what the line says, and we may feel invited to wonder about the slippage. Perhaps the speaker isn’t entirely sure that this poem is sufficiently unlike that poem after all, or that a mere lack of resemblance is enough of a merit. On the previous page there is a prose epigram that makes ...”

“... forces have unpredictable consequences; for instance, the invisible hand of the market may lead to my failure and my neighbour’s success, even if I work much harder and am much more intelligent). Contrary to appearances, these mechanisms don’t contest or threaten hierarchy, but make it palatable, since ‘what triggers the turmoil of envy is ...”

“... Florian’s fable ‘La Carpe et les carpillons’, about disobedient and thoughtless children, may also have come into it. The sisters’ studies at the pensionnat ended abruptly in November 1842, when they returned to Haworth on hearing that their Aunt Branwell had died. In January 1843, Charlotte went back to Brussels, without Emily, to become an English ...”

“... creaky standbys of literary form is so ludicrously foregrounded that the critical reader may perceive it as a kind of threat: a cuff on the shoulder, a meaty finger to the chest. Are ya in, the novel seems to be asking in its opening pages, or are ya out? It’s very hard not to be in. Harbach is a solid writer, inoffensively funny, pretty good at ...”

“... surprising. Determining the ‘source’ of a river is, it turns out, not a simple matter. There may be many plausible contenders. You can argue that it is the joining together and accumulation of the water from a number of tributaries that constitutes the ‘source’, not any one of them in particular. This issue gave pause even to Victorian explorers, not ...”

“... were at a certain point almost interchangeable – a sort of Picasso-Braque situation. But that may just be wishful thinking, in the same way as the idea that almost all the changes in Venetian painting in the decade around 1510 were somehow due to Giorgione. It would be wiser to admit that, in our current state of ignorance, it is impossible to say how ...”

“... to take their own cars with them. Readers eager for a feel of steamy, seamy Havana in the 1950s may feel English takes too long to get there, then skimps a little on the detail. But what he does offer provides plenty of scope for extrapolation. There was the legendary Tropicana, located in a jungle outside Havana, with its scantily clad dancers and lavish ...”

“... of the governing assumptions about intellectuals, but it doesn’t square with the facts. France may be a special case, especially France between the 1930s and the 1950s, but the British situation should be regarded as ‘one distinctive variant of a larger international pattern’. Germany, Russia, Italy and the United States, among others, share with ...”

“... facilities in hospitals remains only an aspiration. And the microbes are evolving in real time. In May 1900 the ‘Report of Drs Mott and Durham on Colitis or Asylum Dysentery’ was presented to the Asylums Committee of the London County Council. Among other things, Mott and Durham recommended that accommodation provided for isolation should not be used for ...”

“... second term we take Frank’s lungs out. They are shapely grey sponges speckled with soot (which may mean only that he lived in a city, not necessarily that he was – sharp breath – a smoker). They are also bigger than the hole we have to squeeze them through, and well-anchored. Even with our increased confidence it’s hard to see where to cut. At ...”