“... of us, along with the vogue for books recalling survey courses in comparative literature, which I hope to exploit by promoting, as though it were a novel, this series of elaborately coded personal letters. There are frequent digressions on Zink’s favourite reading material. Her version of the anxiety of influence, she says, is a ‘fear of failure to make ...”

“... Even Louis Blanc refused to support them, though he did try to persuade them to stand down in the hope of avoiding further bloodshed. The lack of a clear doctrine or principle, beyond the forlorn cry ‘Liberty or Death!’, had an unsettling effect, even on hostile observers. Why had they done it when the odds were so perilously stacked against them? And why ...”

“... the old flapper was attired as for the office, clearly knowing when he was licked. You couldn’t hope to out-dress old Frankie-Frank Spellman, one of the great bitch drag queens of this or any other age. Nobody should grudge the frumpish Hoover a fling or two, or indeed a flounce, though probably with his figure and complexion the stockings were a ...”

“... the happy centre of things, by a pure act of perception’ (as well as in the embarrassed hope of impressing a comely and spirited girl). Privileged to begin with, Macdonald had the additional huge advantage and distinction of beginning a radical life as a rebel against left orthodoxy – thus sparing himself the mendacity and eventual burn-out which ...”

“... practically the entire work of the organisation to the Anti-Nazi League, in the too-evident hope of picking up some impressionable young members. As is the way with such things, the members gained were just as swiftly lost, and there came a need for another fund-raising and membership-boosting quickie. Worst of all, though, was Portugal. The SWP openly ...”

“... is or where she is,’ the man said. ‘What have you been able to do?’ ‘We can do nothing but hope,’ he said. ‘We have prayed,’ the woman said, ‘all the time we have prayed.’ ‘Good,’ I said absently. I was looking round the room. It was gloomy but for the fire and an oil lamp in the alcove on the rear wall. Hams, cured by smoke, hung from ...”

“... are not a relishing of sadness. ‘Actually, I like to think of myself as quite funny, and I hope this comes through in my writing. But it’s unhappiness that provokes a poem.’ The achieved authority of sadness is not the same as the inaugurating provocation of unhappiness. Larkin would be suspicious of Tennyson’s open arms:Immeasurable sadness!And ...”

“... beginnings and endings), find the data, put them on paper – and then look at the map. In the hope that the visual construct will be more than the sum of its parts: that it will show a shape, a pattern that may add something to the information that went into making it. And a pattern does indeed emerge: at the beginning, a country place of residence, at ...”

“... withstood every attack alone and friendless, yet he survives. His fans around the world can only hope to endure life’s challenges with a small part of that endurance and determination. Godzilla ...”

“... deepening regional interest – on both sides of the border – in the Franco-Prussian War. That hope has yet to be ...”

“... in the period on which a leading historian worked to write their biography (perhaps you don’t)?Christopher Hill had a fortunate life on the whole, and his good fortune now extends beyond the grave in the shape of this excellent biography. Michael Braddick is himself a distinguished historian of 17th-century England, the period that was the focus of ...”

“... even two rival schools, though some of them have started fabricating a split, presumably in the hope of establishing that there are real forces at war. The attempt to make MacNeice a precursor seems to have begun in 1974 in Time was away: The World of Louis MacNeice, edited by Terence Brown and Alec Reid, but at that stage it was a tentative ...”

“... approach of Guy de Mallac and others, worthy as their pioneering studies have been. But Christopher Barnes’s ‘Literary Biography’, of which this solid work is the first of two volumes, will certainly become the standard and indispensable guide for students not only of the poet but of his age and literary milieu. The popular Western image of ...”

“... encouraged by his family. His brother has written about him. His diaries have been published. Mr Christopher Sykes has produced an ultimately unsatisfactory but absorbing biography, Mr Don Gallagher has edited an anthology of his journalism, full of biographical clues. For fanatics, a regular Waugh newsletter is published in the United States, dealing with ...”

“... Michael Levey, Richard Wollheim, Marina Warner and, singled out for a special treatment, Charles Hope – are, in this new edition, keenly reprehended. It should be said that Steinberg, a lively and resourceful writer, could not with any justice be charged with irreverence or lubricity. That he greatly enjoyed researching, writing and defending his thesis is ...”