“... about the traps and delusions created by this habit of thinking. Such ineptitudes, he writes, ‘may well prompt misgivings about the people who write them’, but they don’t undermine the central hypothesis of feminist criticism: ‘that gender is a crucial determinant in the production, circulation and consumption of literary discourse.’ Clearly it is ...”

“... wise to you and your little ways now and I’ll put a stop to them. Do you hear me? You may be fooling everyone but you’re not fooling me.’ Dry eyes wide open, Faten stared at him. He shook her. ‘Why are you staring at me?’ he screamed. ‘Have you never seen me before? Or is it because you know I’ve found out about you, Miss ...”

“... of amendments, among which is to be found both the right to strike and ‘a guarantee that workers may freely elect their own professional representing bodies, independent of the party and the state’. In September 1976, in response to the continuing severe repression of workers who had taken part in the June strikes, a group of some dozen intellectuals ...”

“... surely that of William Strang, the Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, in a paper of May 1943: We need Russian collaboration. The conclusion of the Anglo-Soviet Treaty marks our decision that this must be our policy … even if fears that Russia lay a ‘heavy hand’ on eastern, central and south-eastern Europe are realised … I should not ...”

“... former secrets find their way into public archives, and the Freedom of Information Act may secure access to others.The vast Manhattan Project, which designed and built the Bomb, was a very great secret. The Axis enemies weren’t supposed to know, but when Hiroshima was obliterated the biggest secret was out, which was that such a thing was ...”

“... he foresees his own ‘demonic possession’ by the craze for ‘novelistic prose’. Of course it may simply be that Pushkin admired Scott and genuinely disliked Kotzebue. And it is true that Hoogenboom’s claim for The Captain’s Daughter – that it is not, as usually thought, influenced by Scott’s Heart of Midlothian and Rob Roy, but drew on Cottin’s ...”

“... nation, Alaska, Brazil, Mexico, Liberia, Honduras, Indonesia, even the City of London. (The last may be the most unexpected: a pilot scheme giving cash, no strings attached, to rough sleepers, run by a charity called Broadway. Thirteen of the City’s longest-term rough sleepers, who had been on the streets for more than four years, were asked ‘what they ...”

“... Second World War).Our tendency to hear Beethovenian rhythm and dynamics as argument, as speech, may explain, in part, why we have such a need to make his dramatic music so personally dramatic. When comedians turn to Beethoven they make the mad animation of his work the funny thing: Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray using the opening of the Fifth Symphony to ...”

“... Most of tonight’s television schedules, it appears, are given over to the Hitler franchise. He may have lost the war, but he’s walking away with the ratings. Two and a half hours of Hitler in Colour, followed by Uncle Adolf (a ‘fact-based’ drama focusing on the Führer’s clammy relationship with his niece Geli Raubal). BBC2 is offering The Nazis: A ...”

“... husband waited and footed the bill. According to Burke, ‘she began planning her escape’ in May 1937 – an escape from the life, though not yet an escape from the man. She wrote home about her fits of what she called ‘the jitters’, while Aziz wrote to her parents that he wanted nothing more than ‘to bring peace to her soul’.She chafed under the ...”

“... in this business, that there’s one name you can keep: one that you feel entitled to, come what may. From somewhere – beyond a door, and another door – there was a burst of male laughter. The door swung shut; the laughter ended in a wheeze, which trailed like another odour on the air. Then a hand reached for my bag. I looked down, and saw a small ...”

“... shops and cheap restaurants. There are few neighbourhoods like it in central London, but its days may be numbered. Until the 1960s, Drummond Street continued to meet Eversholt Street on the east side of Euston, but this section of the road disappeared, along with the Euston Arch, when the present station was built. There was considerable opposition to the ...”

“... plan was agreed even so, and war broke out on 29 November 1947. By the time Arab armies invaded in May 1948, around a thousand had died on each side and some 300,000 Palestinians had fled or been expelled. In July 1948 the Israeli army attacked the Palestinian village of Lydda, located between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Soldiers threw hand grenades into ...”

“... for Night Train in 1997 and has stayed there since. Night Train has a female narrator, though that may not have been enough to reverse the gender imbalance in Amis’s readership. In interviews promoting The Pregnant Widow (2010) he went so far as to describe himself as a ‘gynocrat’, someone who would welcome the rule of women. This apparent submission ...”

“... to the Maidan, where the temporary government, supposed to rule till elections at the end of May, was due to be presented to the crowd. The square is bisected by Khreshchatyk, Kiev’s main street, a broad north-south thoroughfare lined by the looming Stalinist spires and arches, the heavy façades, of the postwar reconstruction. At an early stage the ...”