“... for the gathering who are now getting ready to return to real office life where ultimate abandon may not be easy to come by. Still, over the final coffee a man from Ciba-Geigy (‘I am a kind of writer. I write ideas in my office and then send them out to be implemented’) feels he has had a thrilling and rare experience. Where else, he asks, can you hear ...”

“... belatedly proclaimed, of the European past. This last point, on which Douglas strongly insists, may provoke some opposition. For example, she says more than once that Hemingway proved to be a better writer about the war than Robert Graves or Siegfried Sassoon, even though they saw a lot more fighting than he did, precisely because he was not, as they ...”

“... of the mystery-meets-matter tensions of Ralegh’s own, begins in the Twenties. Checking out what may actually lie at the spot where Ralegh’s chart places the wriggling ‘creature’ of the title (the mythic lake of Manoa on which El Dorado was supposed to stand), Nicholl found Angel Falls – named for Jimmy Angel, the bush-pilot who should, from his ...”

“... majestic. The mountains and highland plains have played a big part in Ethiopia’s isolation, and may have something to do with its distinct calendar (eight years behind our own), and the unique script and alphabet of the Amharic language. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa never to have been colonised, apart from the brief but damaging Italian occupation ...”

“... suggest a narcissistic personality who gradually lost touch with the external world. His diagnosis may not be clinically watertight but it does point up the sense in which Richard’s reign saw a triumph of the will over frequently unpromising material circumstances. Richard created for himself an iconic status which belied his unimpressive personal ...”

“... bereavements, casual institutional brutality, adolescent male sexuality, possible alcoholism – may seem to make for depressing reading, the book leaves one with a sense of exhilaration. Healy is very aware of the tricks which memory and a retrospective desire for order can play, and is at pains to let us know that, while he cannot avoid their snares, he ...”

“... leaders, has effectively made travel arrangements for anyone who holds different views. This may be perfectly obvious, but long experience has taught me that not all innocents have the same status. In 1948 my mother, brother and I were deported from Austria by a pro-Tito English colonel who lectured us that we had no right to leave a country run by ...”

“... who wish to do murder, they better not do it in the state of Florida, because we may have a problem with our electric ...”

“... of A-Level rundown on the ‘background’. Thus we get, repeatedly, this kind of thing: ‘Hume may be regarded as the father of philosophical atheism. His assault on religion was twofold. First he sought to show that ...’ Also, running through the book, there is a too determined jokiness, an insistent watch-my-speed: ‘This is not an address to Chloe or ...”

“... of these transitory trades, not forgetting Mesdames Renée and Fifi. But back to the war. What, it may be wondered, was the part played in the struggle by Captain Molyneux and Captain Amies? Irish-born Molyneux had won the Military Cross and been wounded three times in 1914-18. With the one good eye left to him he had built up a fashion house which enjoyed ...”

“... questions were asked, and the same points raised (e.g. Arafat’s promise to declare a state on 4 May 1999 when a state was already declared in 1998). The fraudulent National Council is to be summoned again to do Arafat’s bidding ‘democratically’. And still the Israeli settlers are on the move; more villages are threatened, more roads are built, more ...”

“... traditional theology, virtue is a matter of energy and enjoyment, and evil mere deprivation. Evil may make a lot of noise, but the dust and heat it raises derive from an incapacity for life, which is why nobody could actually be in hell. To be damned must mean to be dead. All this, however, is bound to look different when the middle classes are in the ...”

“... son, and one of the best known Italians of the 20th century: Padre Pio. His beatification on 2 May has been an epic feat of organisation, with most of the country immersed in preparation for the big event (and even the Serie A game between Roma and Inter postponed to the following day). Pope John Paul II is to celebrate a televised mass in St ...”

“... visitors coped with their problem is another. Prince Albert, a driving force of the Exhibition, may not have known that the rage for newfangled water closets was flooding the drains and cesspools, causing dire contamination to London’s drinking water. This aspect of progress does not sully the pages of Auerbach’s book, though he tells us that Prince ...”

“... of the Klan as screwball-vigilantes. But then maybe the publishers were desperate. These minutes may be oh-so-secret but for much of the time they read like the weekly log-books of some particularly dim Boy Scout troop. Local trivia meets procedural pomposity. Week in, week out, for two seemingly never-ending years, these small-town ...”