“... sent Colonel Lawrence DSO, CB into the ranks of the Army and Air Force, the lure of anthropology may have played a part. The Mint, published posthumously as an account of the foul-mouthed soldiery he knew, lineal descendants of the goddams of Harfleur, could have been the product of a cool, interested expedition among the marsh Arabs. The boy Ned Lawrence ...”

“... diary for the visitors, ‘Remember to peruse Shakespeer’s plays and bee versed in them, yt I may not bee ignorant in yt matter’; the old woman quoted by Wordsworth in her reaction to tourism and the picturesque – ‘Bless me! folk are always talking about prospects: when I was young there was never sic a thing neamed!’ Yet there is a strong tension ...”

“... League has attempted to take on the best teams in the world. They’ve already done well and they may do better, largely because they have such a strong identity – an identity derived from the way they play. Everyone knows what they’re supposed to do: as Charlton puts it, ‘we don’t play our game, we inflict our game on other people.’ There ...”

“... problem seriously. How he did so is well documented, first in an interview with him recorded on 27 May and published in the exhibition catalogue, secondly in a lecture given at the Tate on 1 October and published in the current issue of the Art Newspaper. I quote from the interview: The architecture as a whole is overblown, authoritarian and a bit ...”

“... the ultimate ‘alterity’ of death itself. Indeed, to focus on gender difference, she suggests, may serve to occlude a considerably more fundamental difference, as Freud’s privileging of castration anxiety and woman’s ‘lack’ obscures the mortal anxiety shared by male and female alike – the ‘lack’ inherent in being human. Though Over Her Dead ...”

“... like a child crying because its parents have left it in the dark all alone.’ That last sentence may show more psychological penetration than Russell knew: the death of both his parents when he was four was undoubtedly a large factor in determining his lifelong feeling of loneliness and isolation. Russell speaks often of the good effects Ottoline had on ...”

“... desperately achieved note of optimism. Whether or not this optimism is borne out by events, it may be assumed that Basil Davidson will remain a true friend to Africa: speaking his mind, getting it wrong sometimes, looking on the bright side, and staying involved. Peter Matthiessen, the accomplished author of numerous books of travel and of wry and terrible ...”

“... sense of Dracula as a fallen angel. Great love in its bafflement turns to great hatred; even evil may have its origins in strangled or thwarted generosity. Taken out of context, the proposition is decent, slightly soggy, well-intentioned but short-winded – try applying it to Goebbels or to the next apprentice vampire who wants to test his fangs on you. In ...”

“... must, in part at least, be immediate and a priori. Like our previous a priori judgments, they may be elicited by experience ... But it is fairly obvious that they cannot be proved by experience ... Knowledge as to what is intrinsically of value is a priori in the same sense in which logic is a priori. Thus, for Russell, ethical knowledge enjoys the ...”

“... three times, each from the perspective of a different history and set of cultural traditions, and may be followed through the three books cross-wise, if you wish. The ‘ancient’ texts are organised according to the antiquarian interests of the 17th century. As in The Arabian Nights, an exiguous narrative set in the present day is interwoven throughout the ...”

“... speaking alone. ‘About that metaphor, the military one,’ she concludes, ‘I would say, if I may paraphrase Lucretius: Give it back to the war-makers.’ A virtuoso landing, and the virtuosity is what counts; we register the skill of the closure, and the highly-placed, controlling presence of the writer. No bibliography follows, although the bookshelf in ...”

“... Wives, Afford no Subject for the Muse than Mirth ... Amusements, Pleasures, Comforts, Days of Joy May a Man’s Mind, but not his Muse, employ; Crabbe characteristically turns the problem from ethics to poetics. Crabbe postulates a chiaroscuro of happiness and sorrow, but he takes disaster as a poetical device which will illuminate the whole field of ...”

“... Confederate widow has lived for more than ninety years. A first-person narrator – ‘My English may be ugly as a mud fence but I know what a story is,’ she boasts – Lucy Marsden tells her story, and many other people’s stories, to an anonymous listener equipped with a tape-recorder. The garrulous old lady’s Carolina brogue is not wholly ...”

“... confess to ignorance about the mood of ordinary citizens in August 1914. Those who marched to war may also have had illusions, but these were soon brutally shattered. How did they cope, why did they continue, what did it all mean to them, what did it do to their patriotism, their religion, their views about authority, their politics and social or class ...”

“... campaign as a war correspondent. But even that is not necessarily true. The rites of a religion may in time be ignored and forgotten by those who once thought them a ...”