“... critic says he does, and indeed that’s part of the transaction. While the critic’s response may not be fully our own, it is an ideal proxy, a model for what our response might be. Of course Winckelmann’s tone, his language of sensibility, is not what we ask from art critics now (though it is sometimes what we get). But that voice of witness still ...”

“... recognise as one of the ... distinctive characteristics of their own kingdom’. Such chauvinism may say as much about the anxious cultural politics of contemporary France as it does about the history of Poussin scholarship, and yet the underlying concern is not without foundation. The villain of the piece (now typecast by his starring role in other ...”

“... The term is one that she took from the natural sciences, and when she adopted it she may have been thinking of Proust, who had recently made such apt and witty use of Maeterlinck’s L’lntelligence des fleurs in describing the first, charmingly camp pas de deux between the Baron de Charlus and his newest heart-throb, Jupien. In biology, a ...”

“... The death of Dennis Potter may have been authored by God, but it was adapted for television by Potter himself. It began after a brief report in the Guardian suggested that Potter’s terminal cancer related to his lifelong addiction to nicotine. By return there was a gleeful letter from Potter revelling in the Potteresque fact that far from his ‘beloved cigarettes’ being the culprits, his forthcoming death from pancreatic cancer was probably iatrogenic: the result of years of lethal medication ...”

“... clueless, can we review our contemporary options and their histories with some sense of relief. We may have very real doubts now about, say, aromatherapy, or ECT, or cognitive psychology – or even about people having personal trainers – but we quite literally have to do something when we begin to feel in some way troubled. It is fortunate that pain has ...”

“... Mallarmé’s ‘seigneur latent qui ne peut devenir’ – had long attracted Segalen, who may or may not have seen something of that broodingly estranged son in himself, as he fought to escape from the orbit of an interfering mother, and was quick to find real-life Hamlets in faraway courts, notably that of the ...”

“... a religion, comparable to but distinct from its Abrahamic siblings, Western societies may feel confident in pressing Muslims to conform to mainstream values while allowing them spaces for public worship and private conscience consistent with national loyalties. If it is much more than a ‘religion’ – a whole, alternative way of being that is ...”

“... Take a sample of current and Recent theorists, chosen with an eye to having as little in common as may be: Heidegger, or Wittgenstein, or Chomsky, or Piaget, or Saussure, or Dewey or any cognitive scientist you like, to say nothing of such contemporary philosophers as Davidson, Dennett, Rorty and Quine. You may choose ...”

“... and Salzburgs, Adshead suggests that regions as large and far apart as Gallia and Galicia may also derive their names from salt deposits. ‘Aryan’ tongues spread over Iran and northern India as well, but did not carry with them the same root-word for salt. It may be conjectured that this root was taken over in ...”

“... of his old boss. Thatcherism was always an aberration from the norm of advanced capitalism. Major may not know how to get back to the mainstream but I shall be astonished if he does not try. On the left, Bennite siege socialism and even Bevanite Clause Four utopianism have disappeared without trace. Labour is now a social-democratic party, committed to a ...”

“... Reading The Cypress Box made her ‘oblivious to the world’. She found her voice, as Larkin may have found his through reading Hardy and knowing Kingsley Amis, and when Gumilev returned he was deeply impressed by what she had written. She had become a better poet than he, and though their marriage was ill-assorted and unhappy, and was to end in divorce ...”

“... last attempt for the present at Dramatic Poetry to a Great Dramatic Poet: ‘Wishing what I write may be read by his light’: if a phrase originally addressed, by not the least worthy of his contemporaries, to Shakespeare, may be applied here, by one whose sole privilege is in a grateful admiration, to Walter Savage ...”

“... high-earning affluent manual worker remains working class while the own-account manual worker, who may earn a good deal less, is placed within the petty bourgeoisie. The working class, so redefined, is found to have declined from 47 per cent of the electorate in 1964 to 34 per cent in 1983. The big growth was in the routine non-manual or white-collar labour ...”

“... out his vulgar error in asking for a ‘drink’, instead of ‘something to drink’, which may well have stimulated Nancy Mitford to write her essay on Hare.) Sir Osbert Sitwell has testified to the mild panic which met Hare’s arrival at a garden party at Renishaw, when ‘the ladies held their hats to their heads and fled, fearing that he might ...”

“... came into existence less than eighty years ago. With the tumult of Brighton scarcely over, it may seem unfair to ask if it is still, and can continue to be, a mass party. A party, that is, which has a large and enthusiastic membership of individuals, agreed on the road they are taking even if they differ about the speed of the journey; a party with an ...”