“... disruptive though these inquiries were, they mostly continued to insist on the centrality of the French avant-garde. Even as social and psychological readings were extended and deepened, the modern transformation of pictorial representation was credited to a celebrated line of painters from Courbet to Cézanne (with a few less well-known names like Mary ...”

“... it seems, did Shakespeare, who never used the word ‘grotto’, not even after the arrival of the French hydraulic engineer and garden designer Salomon de Caus at the Jacobean court encouraged the fashion for fancifully ornamented damp underground chambers that had been sweeping Italy since the 1560s. While the Stuarts and the Russells were commissioning ...”

“... has given rise to endless attempts at definition, by foreign observers as well as Americans. The French film critic Serge Daney, who loved America’s cinema as much as he despised its imperialism, called it ‘the place that makes it possible to dream, but also the corner of reality that dreams crash into’. Octavio Paz, evoking the country’s immense ...”

“... do. But so also do a collection of people whom I’ve never seen before, and in such numbers that David Hyde Pierce, who is presenting it, is practically elbowed out of the way. These turn out to be the backers who, of course, have every reason to be pleased and indeed one of them duly adjusts my tie. I am then bundled out through a back door and across the ...”

“... motifs are intertwined with contemporary academic and sexual politics, clearly owes a good deal to David Lodge; the theme of the lost literary legacy invokes The Aspern Papers; James might be cited again in relation to the book’s punning deployment of ‘possession’ as a term of material, erotic and demonic significance, an association that also reminds ...”

“... and instantly recognisable’ African rhythm) to the ‘folk-songs’ of the British Isles like ‘David of the White Rock’, ‘Loch Lomond’ and ‘Oh, No, John, No!’ All represented the ‘music of basic realities, the spontaneous expression by the people for the people of elemental emotions’. Robeson’s early preference of spirituals to ...”

“... German, Hebrew and Yiddish barely so. The aristocrats like to address one another in English or French, and their spiritual home, needless to say, is Paris. Wokulski’s dogged perseverance in taking lessons from the red-whiskered Mr William Collins, teacher of English, pays off at a crucial moment in the plot, when he overhears a conversation not meant for ...”

“... Wagner soon discovered how little this really meant: hundreds of such letters were written by the French cultural élite about outsiders, who rarely succeeded in penetrating the charmed circle. By way of reaction, Wagner took as his model those musicians who rejected society and patronage: the dead Beethoven, whose work Wagner consistently championed and ...”

“... away from the eyes of the international community. The ‘autonomy’ envisaged by the Camp David agreements is unlikely to extend beyond garbage collection. Ostensibly Two Minutes over Baghdad is a True Life Adventure Story in the ‘Entebbe’ tradition, in which an author trades his skills as a publicist against ‘inside’ information supplied by ...”

“... began to distance themselves from Moscow. The Spanish and Italian Parties, followed by the French, used the term ‘Eurocommunism’ – but it was not enough to revive the faith that Khrushchev’s speech had destroyed. Medvedev’s discussion of Khrushchev’s motives in denouncing Stalinism – partly a move in the internal power struggle and partly ...”

“... red over her wide mouth.’ This is not a novel of scenes but a meditation on experience in the French tradition. One problem is how far Frances is presented ironically. The sharpening of her self-knowledge often seems excessively depreciatory, while her bedazzlement by the aura and gusto of the Frasers can hardly be shared by the reader: we can’t look at ...”

“... fellows living in college. Who more suitable than young Maud? The name had only to be mentioned to David Lindsay Keir and the job was done. Politics was to be his subject, it seems suddenly to have been decided. ‘But why politics?’ Why indeed? Anyhow, G.D.H. Cole put him on to the subject of local government; the Home University Library wanted a book on it ...”

“... by his side. He died on a cold day in January, and they prayed for him in chapel. We are not in a French-Canadian Catholic school, because of the portrait of the founder in the entrance hall, ‘the school’s chief financial rock, a fruit importer who had abandoned Presbyterianism for the Church of England when a sudden rise in wealth and status demanded the ...”

“... defective. Sir Edward Herbert died before the Report had been signed. Mr R.B. Southall and Sir David Anderson ‘belonged’, in Mr Carswell’s words, ‘to the silent minority’. All four members of the ‘inner group’, as Mr Carswell defines it, were academics. The most serious result of the under-representation of secondary education on the ...”

“... tears with Monty’s arm around him (Monty confessed to telling the King that de Lattre was ‘the French equivalent of Dickie Mount-batten’). The next big post, and his last, was that of Deputy Supreme Commander of Nato. As a strategist, he was all for the Suez venture and hitting Nasser for six. Meanwhile he was working on the book that would tell all, a ...”