“... vote. In the ensuing mess, all sides will claim victory, whether political, legal or moral. There may even be an attempt at a declaration of independence, though this would be more theatrical than real. The language used to describe events – ‘traitor’, ‘conquistador’, ‘coup d’état’ – has not displayed what Catalans like to think is one of ...”

“... of measures to restrict public protest. The House of Lords has thrown out some of them, but that may prove only a temporary reprieve if the Tories continue to need ‘red meat’ to feed their supporters. The second is the criminalisation of ‘unauthorised encampments’, tacitly aimed at Travellers and Roma. The House of Lords voted in favour of the harsh ...”

“... own study suggest that, if history has lost its erstwhile meaning and focus, the cause may lie deeper than mere donnish technicality and folly. As Cannadine himself shows, Trevelyan’s highly idiosyncratic style – based on intuition illustrated with documents – was never very representative of history as practised in English university ...”

“... not perversely to butcher Coleridge’s rhythm (‘A sadder and a wiser man’), and the mangling may just be Brett’s work. (A.E. Housman to his publisher Grant Richards with the fifth edition of A Shropshire Lad: ‘I enclose a copy of our joint work. The results of your collaboration are noted on pages 4, 22, 45, 55, 71, 77, 78, 92, 116.’) Then there is ...”

“... Sloane Ranger style, Peter York has told us, reflects ‘a state of mind that’s eternal’. This may be putting it a bit strongly: but the Sloane ancestry goes back at least to the days when knighthood was in flower and one really needed a pony. Like British trade unions, Sloanes have deep roots as a defensively-organised collective, and ‘What Really ...”

“... books on manners tried to refine the practices of bed-sharing, spitting and blowing the nose (one may read about the ‘sociogenesis’ and ‘psychogenesis’ of these teachings in Norbert Elias’s The Civilising Process, and doubtless elsewhere). Two centuries ago, when John Debrett became a miscellaneous publisher, his contemporary advice-givers had moved ...”

“... son be afraid of the hackneyed phrase,’ he advises the proud mama of a budding author: ‘it may very well be the most suitable.’ He tends to harp like a schoolmaster on the theme that the necessary end of culture is ‘right living’, that the final test of a work of art is its moral value. We learn, too, that the purpose of all art is to please, and ...”

“... on this method. It is true that the music in the movie, although by turns haunting and jarring, may seem incidental, a form of thematic accompaniment to images and story. But it is more than that. It is what the images and the story are not quite saying. Paul Julian Smith, in a subtle essay accompanying the Criterion Collection DVD of the film, reminds us ...”

“... empty nature of revenge if and when it is achieved. What do we have when we have it? They may also be telling us, although this is probably too metaphysical a thought to draw from such an untalky movie, something about the desolation of all achievements chased too long and too hard, the moment when winning a war or getting what you want seem to have ...”

“... At the end of May, Frank Schirrmacher, an editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, declared in an open letter that he had refused to serialise Martin Walser’s novel Tod eines Kritikers, or ‘Death of a Critic’, on the grounds that it was a ‘document of hatred’, a fantasy ‘execution’ of the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki ...”

“... and education are rather matters which are crucially affected by the philosophical positions we may adopt on other topics such as the nature of knowledge, morality and beauty. If we want to understand what can or should be taught to whom, and by whom this should be done, we need to understand what can and should be learnt, and by whom, and under what ...”

“... present on the day of my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred.We may need to stumble among the paradoxes for a while, but we can also do a little interpretative work. We could decide, for example, whether the man is deluded or onto something. How does he shift so quickly from tenderness to hatred? How can he have recognised so ...”

“... to carry home and stick under a short harmonium leg. Many of them, of course, will read it, which may also explain why the Sellers type face is larger: the text may be read through tears, undistorted. I know this, because I have tried it, and the fact that my own tears sprang from other sources than grief in no way ...”

“... of this highly enjoyable book, Harvey’s sense of irony does not seem to have deserted him: there may perhaps be a use for it at All Souls College, Oxford, where this poet is now a fellow. He acknowledges that, while privileged young Westerners like himself are embracing Eastern values, there is a corresponding shift in the other direction, as young ...”