“... Underworld’. Tóibín is also the novel’s UK publisher, under the Tuskar Rock imprint, which may have something to do with it, but does Christos Tsiolkas’s prose really bear comparison with DeLillo’s and Franzen’s? Would either of them publish a sentence like: ‘She did look her age but looked fantastic’? Or: ‘Sam’s abandonment of her had ...”

“... things look rather different if you approach them from a classical standpoint. Collingwood himself may have chosen not to reflect on the influence of his formal education; he became more concerned to attack the whole history of professional pedagogy as far back as Plato. But it is surely crucial that he was a product of the old Oxford ‘Greats’ (that ...”

“... this explanation ‘stimulated a babyish interest that lasted through my life’. The collecting may partly have been compensatory: Wellcome went on spending sprees when he suffered loss or rejection, for example when he divorced his wife, Syrie, the daughter of the founder of Barnardo’s Homes. He married her when he was 48 and she was 22. It was a ...”

“... in the second half of the 20th century, of Britain’s manufacturing industry. The universities may have played some part in this decline; but a greater part was played by Britain’s business culture. It is a curiosity of this document – and of the attitudes of successive British governments – that the relationship between business and the universities ...”

“... Perhaps I am reading in – reading back – too much of the later Goya into Floridablanca, which may just be a young professional’s slightly over-reaching bid for fame. Scholars for the most part advise people like me to avoid ‘seeing X in the light of Y’ too readily where Goya is concerned (Xavier Bray’s meticulous catalogue is typical): they are ...”

“... the largest place in Brooks County but still a one-horse town. The Dairy Queen burned down in May and the Walmart closed in July. Falfurrias once had a reputation as a hub for illegal gambling but this summer the gaming houses were raided and shut down. The town seems abandoned, apart from a border patrol station and a detention centre. The United States ...”

“... to an orchestra, with strings, brass, percussion and more. That the sound has different components may not be a problem for Dehaene – it might be seen as one item. But suppose that I single out the brass section for particular attention. Given what Dehaene says about delays, it should now sound as if it were a note or two behind the rest of the orchestra. My ...”

“... was in transit, released from the Cathedral Works but not yet installed in its new location. On 14 May 1504, at 8 p.m., the David, upright in a cart, began to be rolled from the cathedral towards the seat of government, pushed over 14 greased logs by more than forty men. The process took four days, requiring that the statue be guarded at night – ‘on ...”

“... in their predictions at the last general election. Turnout, and the age profile of those who vote, may prove decisive. The Scottish electorate is, moreover, highly volatile, as recent results have shown. In the 2010 general election, Labour had 41 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats, the SNP six. In 2015, the SNP took 56 seats, and Labour a single ...”

“... covertly in his Memoirs (1991), there’s a feeling that Larkin’s poems, splendid though they may be, are in need of corrective piss-taking and don’t carry the weight that ‘any novel does’. After his death, in 1995, Amis took less of a battering than Larkin had. Martin Amis’s Experience (2000) softened the prevailing image of him as the meanest ...”

“... modern history. In terms of the way historians approach and conceive of the era, Hobbes’s shadow may well be longest. Who was he and why is he now seen to be so important? One of the most informative and entertaining hagiographies, and the starting point for all modern treatments, was written by the antiquarian John Aubrey towards the end of Hobbes’s long ...”

“... his will Bess was instructed to hold an annual séance after his death to try and get in touch. He may have described himself as ‘a charlatan, a mountebank, a vaudevillian, and an itinerant magician’, but Houdini didn’t behave as though he’d quite convinced himself that he didn’t have supernatural powers. From 1918, his performances became more ...”

“... Heepishly, he wrote to Archbishop Temple: ‘My earnest prayer is that this good man’s sacrifice may be used by God to purge me if possible from faults which He alone sees.’ No question of anyone else being able to see any such faults. Did he ever pause for a moment towards the end of his long life and wonder whether he might have been wrong about ...”

“... the conventional wisdom has it that you show up early on voting day: the lines at the booth may be longer, but the chances are that no one else will yet have voted in your name. And trouble, if it comes, comes in the afternoon. On 10 April, I joined the women’s line outside the voting booth at Sano Gauchar, in Baneshwor. Conversation mainly had to do ...”

“... which Groebner describes, the many Tartar women are characterised as ‘olive-coloured’, which may be an example of the practice that led to the mental habits of classification discussed by Loomba and Burton. Having explored the various categories of description used by Europeans over the centuries, Groebner turns to the documents and objects of ...”