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“... the stricken village or town ... This is Gavin Ewart, who adds: If you’re accident-prones you may hear those dread tones and meet that baleful eye! There are also substantial essays on our political culture, on economic and social policy, on defence and foreign affairs. Collectively, what they propose is a new polity based upon a redefined notion of ...”

“... have the idea that we live in a world that exists independently of us and our thoughts. This idea may be called realism. Almost everyone shares it, and even those whose philosophies seemingly deny it really accept it in some form – some literary theorists, for instance, who say that we can never compare our texts to ‘the world’ but only to other ...”

“... the Prime Minister’s son, Brunei and Harrods. The story which surfaced in the Observer of 18 May 1986 was, to be frank, a bit puzzling. It was decorated with a large photograph of the Swami in beard and beads, and he certainly could not complain of the way in which he was introduced to the British public: A rich and mysterious Indian guru is emerging as ...”

“... and access to wealth almost invariably affects or confirms a fictional character’s identity. It may do so for the better or worse, and either way it tends to act as an enticement to readers. We like to think of the wealthy as enjoying their wealth, but we also like to be told that they don’t always enjoy it. In fiction the rich and the rest of us can ...”

“... as the tragedian Elisa Rachel, whom Charlotte Brontë had seen in London in 1851. Sarah Bernhardt may be better known today, but it was Rachel who haunted the English literary imagination throughout the 19th century. In James’s The Tragic Muse, the Jewish Cockney actress Miriam Rooth claims to be in the same style as ‘that woman’, and George Eliot’s ...”

“... synonymous, and of the Whigs as an effete clique of reactionary landed aristocrats, these claims may come as a surprise. They do, however, go with the grain of much recent research, in which the leading Whig magnates have been portrayed as industrious, responsible, widely-read statesmen working to a serious reform agenda. Even before Gladstone had committed ...”

“... as ever. Never has philosophy been so fast, so neat.’ In view of all these successes it may be surprising to find that Ayer habitually thought of himself as an ‘outsider’ and ‘self-made’, exaggerating the poverty of his family, looking at the world, as his widow, Dee Wells, puts it, with ‘big desiring eyes’, and, despite a career of ...”

“... and Metamorphosis – Charles Martindale, who protested at Tom Paulin’s review in the LRB, and Richard Swigg who many months ago answered Alistair Elliott’s more brutal review in the TLS – have every reason to wonder that Tomlinson should still solicit the suffrages of a public that shows him such ill-will. He must be, so it must seem, either ...”

“... soon for them to have a History. Also, Histories, however strongly some professional historians may dispute the fact, have to have a point in the present, and it is by no means clear what this point, for the Social Democrats, should be In 1981 and 82, in the first flush of success, it might have seemed that it was to explain the beginning of the breaking of ...”

“... you know that your faith, your assurance, are genuine and permanent; Calvin acknowledges that men may have temporary faith. But since the gift of faith comes before repentance it is no good looking inside yourself for signs that will justify assurance, or trying to verify your faith by good works. For Beza and Perkins, the problem is how a man can know that ...”

“... the task of explaining why we are wrong to underestimate the power of British rain: why, though it may never inspire the immediate awe of a hurricane or a tornado or a Russian purga, it is worthy of respect and fear; and how, even as the mysterious forces of cultural evolution lead more urban Britons to wander about without umbrellas and rainwear, hoping that ...”

“... art, of course, depicts nudes. The Hepburn-like (or horrible-troll-like) naked body, though, may or may not be beautiful. He or she is real. He or she does return the viewer’s gaze. He or she is an active subject of desire – as well as of everything else, to quote Nietzsche, that’s ‘human, all too human’. And ...”

“... that they went on to discuss heatedly their rival pronunciations of Latin. That shared culture may actually be dead, and that story’s significance may live on only in the eye of sentiment, but I feel bound to carry on regardless, believing that Horace said, matchlessly, a lot of sane and valuable things. When Horace ...”

“... a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness. At the core of this moral character lies the spirit of liberty: liberty ...”

“... In The Crucible of Creation (1998) he attacked Gould, ‘biting the hand that once fed him’ as Richard Fortey put it in his review, in a way that made ‘a shoal of piranha seem decorous’.* The range of evolutionary options is tightly constrained, he insisted, and wherever there is life, on earth or any other planet, human-like creatures are likely to ...”