“... great metaphysical systems of German Idealism. The challenge consists in the suggestion that we may somehow be locked in by our own limitations, unable to crash through to something with which it is very important to get in touch. In the Middle Ages, it was God who seemed out of reach. Human finitude might, or might not, manage to bridge the gap between ...”

“... This book will save your life’: it’s a bold claim. In A.M. Homes’s new novel, Richard Novak has systematically removed himself from the world of human relationships. In the wake of a failed marriage, he moved to Los Angeles and set up a perfectly ordered existence. He stopped going to work years ago; instead, each morning he checks the market while exercising on his treadmill and drinks his special breakfast shakes ...”

“... that ‘what seems to be the fragmentation in philosophy found at the end of the 20th century may be due to more than the institutional imperatives of specialisation and professionalisation. It may be inherent in the subject itself.’ Philosophers used to think that the point of their discipline was to attain a ...”

“... the token tenantry of rustic characters, enigmatic, pragmatic, dogmatic, deeply enduring. Readers may detect an odour of Lawrence here and there, or catch a whiff of Cold Comfort Farm: but the scene is deepest Ireland. Onto this pastoral-mythical set Mr McGinley brings the machinery of a plot derived from the parable of the talents. On his 77th ...”

“... Same at Home? (Picador, £15.99). The narrator is a TV presenter, as, of course, is Mark Lawson. Richard Fleming is not the presenter of BBC2’s Review, however; not even in the way that Lawrence Castle, the Prime Minister in the novel, ‘is’ Tony Blair, and President Riley ‘is’ Bill Clinton (the novel’s set in 1999). In Lawson’s imaginings, the ...”

“... about here is the tactics of self-preservation in an obstinately unregenerated society ... It may be objected that Prometheus plans to retire from a regenerated world, but the point there is that Prometheus and Asia have no business in such a world, for they are immortals. Prometheus’ job is done ...’ Shelley’s remark is thus immediately located in ...”

“... existence of moral obligations ‘dictated by reason’. At the end of Shame and Necessity, which may be the best historical study of ethical ideas in recent decades, Williams says that Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel are all on the same side, all believing in one way or another that the universe, or history, or the structure of human reason can, when properly ...”

“... could accept with equanimity the death at sea of several hundred sailors simply because – if I may borrow that phrase – they came from a country with which we were in dispute and which had a tradition of putting up too readily with dictatorial regimes. And if there are those who find it distasteful to talk in the same breath, as though that puts them on ...”

“... du monde on dit “presser des questions”, en français on dit “torture”.’ Atrocities may have been widely discussed among left-wing intellectuals, but knowledge of them was not confined to habitués of the Deux Magots. Jean Lartéguy’s popular novels about the Parachute Regiment, which could be picked up at any station bookstall, were quite ...”

“... Union at night. The first foreigner to fly on the Maxim Gorky was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on 17 May 1935. Sitting in the cabin, Saint-Exupéry imagined himself on the balcony of a hotel set in the sky. The very next day, the Maxim Gorky collided with another plane during a propaganda flight over Moscow and crashed, killing its 36 passengers and crew, and ...”

“... frightens me but the idea of enforced idleness. As long as I can write books, even though they may not be published, I think that I can be happy.’ He had retired 13 years earlier from the responsible position of travelling Post Office surveyor which he had held during most of his wage-earning life. The only complaint he voiced about this and his other ...”

“... small attacks, but the local population was, Ludewig suggests, mostly quiet – an attitude that may well have been prompted by the massacre of villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane by Waffen-SS soldiers a few weeks before. Model, on the other hand, had to watch German forces squeeze along the few remaining roads near Falaise, abandoning most of their equipment ...”

“... this immortal ‘me’. Discussing a study of 1883 entitled Walt Whitman and written by his friend Richard Bucke, he insists to Traubel that his endorsement of the book was never meant to extend to its interpretations: as to his explication – no, no, no – that I do not accept – for Leaves of Grass baffles me, its author, at all points of its meaning ...”

“... The title of Tao Lin’s sixth book and second novel is an act of mild provocation. Richard Yates belongs to a biography, not a novel – certainly not one in which Yates himself doesn’t appear. One character in the book steals a copy of The Easter Parade; another reads Disturbing the Peace; a third tells an anecdote about a reading Yates once gave ...”

“... year of what has often been called the Peasants’ Revolt. The insurgency began in Essex in late May, spread quickly to Kent and on 13 June the rebels gathered on Blackheath, entering London the next day. Joined by many from the city, they sacked John of Gaunt’s palace of the Savoy and forced the king, the 14-year-old ...”