“... still more or less current: ‘what time do you have?’ Proust, though surely more of a stay-at-home than Zola, concurred with him about ‘those marvellous places, railway stations’: indeed, the title of his masterpiece echoes the most evocative phrase in any language for a booking-hall, la salle des pas perdus. Often enough, the vicissitudes of railway ...”

“... visits the Underworld on Circe’s instructions, to consult Tiresias about how best to get home to Ithaca. Among the shades Odysseus encounters is that of Achilles, who says: ‘Don’t you know that it’s sweeter to be alive – in any shape or form – than lord of all these shadows?’ In Homer he’s less ...”

“... Farm, who had to slave for her harsh aunt Miranda Sawyer in order to pay off the mortgage on her home. Fleda, in Queechy, had the same problem; the word mortgage had a fearsome ring then, which it may have regained today. There was Anne of Green Gables, straight from the orphanage and received coldly because she had red hair and should have been a boy. There ...”

“... the sky in their quest for hostile aircraft ... And here is his unwitting version (1915) of the Home Guard’s determination to repel invasion in 1940: Yesterday I drilled with the Ditchingham and Bungay Volunteer Defense Corps on the Common, whereof I am a platoon Commander. The spectacle was distinctly funny – that of a lot of determined old gents ...”

“... Russian prototypes aside, he essentially belongs in the tradition of the American cop, his true home a Warner Brothers movie. He’s not expected to answer awkward existential questions: but he has something, an integrity of his own, that only a hero empty of everything else seems to possess. The empty heroes of Hemingway and the earlier American crime ...”

“... a moment often treated as homoerotic (Mary Magdalene had been warned not to touch the risen Lord). Monastic frescoes of Thomas lead Betancourt to reflect more broadly on monasticism as a same-sex institution, even a kind of ‘queer utopia’. For instance, could the ritual foot-washing on Maundy Thursday have aroused or satisfied erotic desires? While ...”

“... Nobel Prize, especially in the US, and especially among people who have read little of him since Lord of the Flies. For it seems that the perception of Golding’s quality does depend in some measure on acquaintance with his work as a whole. There is nothing very surprising about this. The need to understand particular works in terms of an artist’s whole ...”

“... allegedly discovers Zaitun to have been in 1271. If Jacob had really wanted something to write home about from Zaitun, he would have had to stick around to see matters out. When the resistance against the Mongols reached its endgame, and the main Imperial family were driven from their capital, it was to Zaitun that they retreated, to beg a reluctant Pu for ...”

“... and alarmed if his gout did not return regularly. Besides, gout was very much a mark of status. Lord Chesterfield said it was ‘the distemper of a gentleman, whereas the rheumatism is the distemper of a hackney coachman’. It attacked not only the wealthy but the creative, which meant that no man of letters could afford to be without it. Some thought it ...”

“... and South American colonies the Inquisition-based criminal procedures which they operated at home. When during the 19th century the metropolitan systems were reformed, to some extent separating the prosecutor from the court (and Portugal became the first state in Europe to abolish the death penalty), the elites which by then were in charge of independent ...”

“... Disciple run to the tomb to see, and having done so, implausibly do and say nothing but just go home. Only in Matthew do the guards report that the body has been stolen. Only in John does Mary Magdalen have her meeting with the risen Christ, whom she takes to be the gardener. In Luke the women report their discovery to the apostles, who do not believe ...”

“... The evidence and argument were over by lunchtime and he phoned his wife to say he’d be home for tea. At two o’clock the judge began delivering his extempore judgment. He outlined the issues; he then went through his notes of evidence, indicating what testimony he accepted and what he didn’t; then he turned to the law, citing substantial ...”

“... de Littleton had noted that children born abroad were ‘out of the allegiance of our sovereign lord the king’ and therefore out of ‘the king’s protection’, and ‘out of help and protect by the king’s law or by the king’s writ’. To be born a subject was to have access to the rights of subjecthood. In the 16th century, ‘Egiptians’ (that ...”

“... often. I just don’t care for any of them. 7 March, Yorkshire. To Oxenholme, half an hour from home and on the edge of the Lake District, where we catch a Virgin train to Glasgow. It’s a brisk ride, only two hours and seems less than that because the scenery is so uninterruptedly rural and sometimes spectacular. Virgin trains, though, are designed on the ...”

“... Lunch with the Prime Minister. Exotic foods on every side. And then Air India, first class, back home! Maybe my condition was self-inflicted. Or it could have been that conference. Colitis can be set off by an allergy. Just think of all those exotic and not always compatible intellectual spices thrown together: Bella Akhmadulina and Chinua Achebe, Régis ...”