“... 1981 recalled that his science education ‘to the age of almost thirty, depended entirely on reading the popular works of men like Julian Huxley, Wells, Haldane, Jeans, Eddington and Infeld … the ideas I got from them were profound, not superficial’). Haldane intended all his articles to contain information unavailable in textbooks, ‘and which a ...”

“... depends on the use of music and auditory effects: Birds, for instance, created a drama almost like Peter and the Wolf out of the different instruments associated with different birds. Stage directions never provoke a laugh, but actual stage business often does. The gap between the experience of watching a performance and ...”

“... The voiceover narrative, written by Geoffrey Ward, is remorseless and untheatrical, just as Peter Coyote’s spoken narration is dry, unaccented and a little formal, as if reading out a casualty report. But Burns and Novick seem to understand how specious it would be to make this a tidy, organised report – a history ...”

“... the kind of scrutiny ordinarily reserved for the novels of Henry James. John Sutherland has been reading and rereading Orwell ever since the 1954 BBC dramatisation of Nineteen Eighty-Four alerted him to the novel’s existence. So he feels under no constraint either to bless or to damn a writer whose ‘inextinguishability’ will ensure that he continues to ...”

“... the gaps between coaching young composers and instrumentalists, running courses on chamber music, reading new scores and attending concerts. Once he joined the BBC, he was a full-time editor, producer, broadcaster and administrator. His mind worked best in the heat of immediate controversy. He loved a sparring partner and his brightest interventions are ...”

“... think that he could refute scepticism. On this last point he disagreed with Kant (on one natural reading of him), and agreed with Heidegger. The former thought it ‘a scandal to philosophy ... that the existence of things outside us ... must be accepted merely on faith, and that if any one sees fit to doubt their existence we are unable to counter his ...”

“... democracy, the one we’re riding now, to Portugal in 1975. Prompted by these events and a wider reading, Anderson’s view of history changed. ‘National fortunes,’ he wrote last year, looking back over his old essays on Ukania and replying to his critics, ‘are not just fates inscribed in industrial birth-certificates. They are also formed by variable ...”

“... in Europe: they have been virtually eliminated, according to Mitford, in the United States. Peter Chamberlen, a Huguenot barber-surgeon whose family settled in London, invented the forceps in 1588. The family kept it a secret for over a hundred years, travelling about to attend the births of those wealthy enough to pay for their ministrations. Not only ...”

“... pre-conference skirmishers were all on the left. The hardly well-kept secret leaked out that Peter Mokaba, the fiery head of the youth section, had had a career as a police informer. Mokaba has become so prominent that it would be embarrassing for the ANC leadership to admit to this, so we suddenly found him cropping up at Mandela’s side to welcome ...”

“... half-dozen really distinguished musical works, Motion would hardly have a book at all. Even when reading about Constant’s development and interaction with the great (Diaghilev, the Sitwells), one is often keener to learn of the luck his rival and friend William Walton was having. Walton’s history lurks in the shadows of the Lambertian narrative, and his ...”

“... a slight resentment towards translations, and in his clever ‘Poem Waiting to be Translated’, Peter Porter asks: Why not remember the heroes of hard situations, those who answered inquisitors in fresh parables, whose lyrical rejoinders are assembled here in memorial Penguins? Porter is glancing at the work of Zbigniew Herbert and Tadeusz Rozewicz, and ...”

“... all these Vs: against! against! against! Ah’ll tell yer then what really riles a bloke.It’s reading on their graves the jobs they did –butcher, publican and baker. Me, I’ll croakdoing t’same nowt ah do now as a kid. ’ard birth ah wor, mi mam says, almost killed’er.Death after life on t‘dole won’t seem as ’ard!Look at this ...”

“... urban for its outer-suburban context’. Hatherley is even more ensorcelled by Alison and Peter Smithson’s béton brut behemoth, Robin Hood Gardens in East London (shown above). For him the Smithsons are the real heroes, and a half-century on he reprises Reyner Banham – with dialectical knobs on – by placing them and their fellow New Brutalists ...”

“... if technically difficult way to decorate a Gothic building, was obtained from the German painter Peter von Cornelius. Hugely popular exhibitions of potential schemes were held in Westminster Hall and much discussed, for the public expected a lot for their money. The scheme was supposed to encourage artists, educate visitors, stimulate the members of the ...”

“... and outrageously reactionary fantasist at the Daily Telegraph, who wrote under the pseudonym Peter Simple. Yet Wharton’s attempts to ridicule the enemies of Unionism were funny precisely because they drew on received assumptions about both Unionists and liberals. Among the most memorable creations in his gallery of bien-pensant absurdity was the trendy ...”