“... self’), mocks him (‘a renegade Muslim trying to be a Buddha’), admits reluctantly that he may have gifts as a guru, and recognises, with his usual opportunism, that though he’s upset for his mother, there could be something in all this for him too. The ambitious, pretentious, unexpectedly courageous Eva does make a new life for all of them: her son ...”

“... and hepped up the old Martin Luther King rhetoric to see the power of militant language. Jackson may be a self-advertising photo-opportunist, but he has the magic words, the political jive-talk, the rhetorical style, and with them he has simply rolled over black politicians whose claims were based on mere competence and practicality. South Africa could well ...”

“... called either Theomania or Demonomania in the medical dictionary’. Faced with this suffering, we may find it hard to maintain that life’s a jest and all things show it. It is, of course, the puritanical direction of Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost that Berowne should tame his frivolity by attempting to ‘jest a twelvemonth in a ...”

“... very next chapter Marjorie rewards him from beyond the grave with £5000 and the Alfa. Try as he may, Benson can’t avoid falling for Greg as easily as Sadie; nor can he avoid making Marjorie into something a good deal worse than an old bat, a PLOP, or Plucky Old Person. Reading about her past, you realise she was doomed to become one; it is a past filled ...”

“... found the lost son. Somehow I have missed being found.’ But this kind of existential rhetoric may have been only the gin talking. Barry Paris makes it plain that somebody, somewhere, always did arrive in the nick of time to bale Brooks out. Always magnificently ungrateful, she would then scornfully retreat to the tried and tested company of ‘my beloved ...”

“... Patrick’ anxious parents that the boy is now performing well, has had a much-improved term, and may yet turn out to be a decent scholar. That leaves the North. It is now 20 years since the People’s Democracy march from Belfast to Derry was attacked by Protestants at Burntollet Bridge; 19 years since the IRA solved its ideological problems by splitting ...”

“... a Fordist and Post-Fordist economy. As the contributors admit, Fordist production processes may simply have shifted their locations, from the old heartland of capitalism to its peripheries. Furthermore, it is easy to exaggerate the differences between a Fordist and Post-Fordist work-force. The majority of those who work for Japanese industry in this ...”

“... pace until after the Second World War. Some of the desperation that fuelled his early writings may be thought to have gone out of him once it became obvious that he was not going to die young. Wells’s most famous imaginative device, the time machine, is relevant to this, since the Time Traveller is in effect cheating death by voyaging forward in another ...”

“... exhibitions are chiefly anthologies of good colour-plates. The one for the New York exhibition may seem more desirable because it covers the artist’s entire career, but the Paris catalogue is in some ways better. It has a more succinct preliminary essay, a more richly documented chronology and a valuable anthology of passages from Matisse’s letters or ...”

“... being phased out as barriers to enterprise and foreign travel.’ Looking for the Possible Dance may sound bleak, but while Kennedy’s strength is not for humour, she carries the reader with her depiction of mood and her eye for the striking image. Commuters waiting the announcement of their train platforms stand ‘like an operatic chorus awaiting ...”

“... who have had opinions on the future as well as the past of architecture. The emulating eye may be self-serving and envious, but it is also challenging and competitive. Goy and Berger, because they are more disinterested, are also less interested in the look of the buildings they deal with. Sometimes they seem downright indifferent. Both use (among ...”

“... at the University of Minneapolis.’ But the essay modulates to a very different note: ‘it may simply be that it is in the renunciatory grain of America to resist the hierarchical and the traditional ... Looking back over the last forty years, it is now our obligation to disclaim the reactionary Eliot. What we will probably go on missing for ever is ...”

“... can come to terms with their pasts, choosing to enshrine some principles and discard others. Some may wish to give this a more empirical and pragmatic cast, but Furet’s political-philosophical account has the great merit of showing that ideas can matter, especially when they engage the attention of political ...”

“... But even if fairly accurate – some parts of the manuscript have been lost, and a few others may have been tampered with by near-contemporary editors – that figure refers to what we now call ‘classical Chinese’, a written form of astonishing compression, that today needs frequent notation and explication even for Chinese readers. One recent edition ...”

“... his accounts of governmental politics tend to be cursory. His attention is caught by people. He may not explore their minds and hearts but he sees the full surface. Back in England he soon assembled and carefully cultivated a kind of floating salon of compatriots, of both genders and varying sexual tastes, most of them known writers such as ...”