“... mother of Solomon, and finally as J, mistress of the sublime and the uncanny as well as of King David. In this new book Bloom cheerfully accepts the reviewer’s proposal. That the author of what eventually became the Torah should have been the relict of the unlucky Uriah, and not an Israelite, but a Hittite, was plainly irresistible. Henceforth, he ...”

“... provide. The signs now are of a swing back to a different, more literal translation of the Bible. David Rosenberg’s The Book of J (1990) reads very differently from things like the Good News Bible or the Revised English Bible: The man named his wife Hava: she would have all who live, smooth the way, mother.     Now Yahweh made clothes from skins of ...”

“... acted as a guide, compiled for an unnamed milordo in about 1766 a summary of sage advice: on the means and cost of transport, food (beware of salads with too much oil but ‘a cold tongue or a piece of roast beef in the chaise will prove an excellent companion’), clothing (black velvet coat and Lyon silk waistcoat for winter), necessary medicines, company ...”

“... for Mallory and Irvine having made it to the top? Before last year, this was unproven (but by no means disproved). It remains so still, even now that Mallory has been found, tantalisingly, with his watch and altimeter broken, without a camera, with his goggles in his pocket. Ironically, we may never know more; even if another expedition goes back, as is ...”

“... days after the birth of their daughter, the future Mary Shelley.Wollstonecraft was described by David Bromwich as ‘the first modern theorist of an idea of individuality’. She strove to effect change not only in the structures of male domination, suggesting, for example, that women should be represented in Parliament, but in the social and psychological ...”

“... but it didn’t cut the numbers coming in. And May’s driving purpose was to cut numbers, after David Cameron had recklessly pledged to bring net annual migration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ from nearly a quarter of a million. Family migration was not the only target – May also capped work permits and student numbers – but the language test was ...”

“... as a call to travel widely, sometimes on a quasi-ethnographic mission to encounter the other as a means to decentre the self à la Michel Leiris. In 1939 the Swiss-born photographer Eva Sulzer sailed along the coasts of British Columbia and Alaska, where she documented the old longhouses and totem poles of Indigenous peoples; in 1960 the African American ...”

“... park lit with a curious violet effect. An interviewer in Diary of a Young Soul Rebel thinks of David Lynch and Hitchcock in relation to this scene, and certainly those names evoke the right sort of frozen ceriness. But there is excitement in the shot, too – a sense of sexual adventure. The mood is lyrical rather than frightening, and it is into this mood ...”

“... pitiless focus on racialism have ensured that there is scant hiding-place for the undecided. This means that a lot of American clergymen are getting prime time without, for once, having to pay for it by the electronic collection plate. In The Eighteenth Brumaire Marx said, rather aptly, that men learning a new language always begin by translating it back into ...”

“... believed – as most did – that all species had been created by the Almighty. The Jesuit Père David, who explored China in the 1860s, was propelled by his quest for God’s wonders, and careless of personal hardship. Exploration was by no means confined to rainforests. Conniff is particularly good on the early history ...”

“... debut and Harold Bloom hailed the arrival of a great original. ‘I think I speak for many,’ David Kalstone wrote, ‘in saying it appeared with that sense of completeness of utterance and identity that must have come with the first books of Wallace Stevens (Harmonium) and Elizabeth Bishop (North and South).’ The book they were talking about was ...”

“... ruling. This happened recently in a case brought against the British government by the Tory MP David Davis and Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson. They challenged the government’s blanket power to retain communications metadata, including emails, phone and internet activity, and the lawfulness of the police and other agencies being able to authorise ...”

“... trait – machismo as a mandatory requirement. This is confidence not as an end, but purely as a means, a way of being in the world that we are encouraged to believe will bring forth inevitable results: the Brexit we desire and deserve. Something else has also become apparent. Between 2010 and 2016, it seemed that ...”

“... Almost five years ago the Cape Town publishing company David Philip brought out Way Up Way Out, a novel by Harold Strachan. Some time later I was sent a copy of the book by a friend of Strachan’s in KwaZulu-Natal, where the author himself has lived much of his life. His name on the cover meant nothing to me – though if I had been more quick-witted I might have connected it to his second trial and period of imprisonment during the apartheid years ...”

“... in a unique position to observe Churchill and the Empire at bay. The worst – and that of course means the best – is yet to ...”