“... There is a clear continuity between narrative and dialogue, as well as some hints that the novel may have an autobiographical basis. Eddie Hobson, the father, is the central figure. He is a sick and disillusioned ex-history teacher who is nursing some terrible secret hidden from, but endlessly guessed at by, the rest of his family. Eddie is, moreover, a ...”

“... progressive and he desired it in order to bolster socialism in Ireland, in spite of its source. It may have been the case that he wanted Ireland, in the throes of a nationalist revolution, to have an ally which would supply that same socially progressive influence. But the evidence, I believe, still points to Connolly’s at the very least subordinating his ...”

“... to cancel itself out, to vanish up its own arsehole as he himself might have put it. That, too, may have been deliberate. His novels self-destruct on every page, consuming in their own energy like the schadenvoll German films of the period – Caligari or Mabuse. Even The Revenge for Love, arguably his masterpiece, and compared by Symons with Koestler’s ...”

“... version of English, just as her Highland divertissement was an artistic version of a fling. In May 1925 she writes to him I took your key, read ¾ of Mrs Dalloway, it is very rapid, interesting, and yet I feel in that book all human beings only puppets. Virginia’s brain is so quick that sometimes her pen cannot catch it, or it is I who is slow. However ...”

“... spied on a sycamore leaf, meant a lot to him and to his powers of enquiry and composition. We may feel a sense of sadness and envy today at the possibilities in experience that seemed open to him – God, medicine, science, religion, travel, spirits and the supernatural. The universe, as Baudelaire was to say of the child in us all, seemed equal to his ...”

“... Sky of blue water, blue-water sky, I sleep with the dubious kiss Of my sky-blue portfolio ... It may be that, after the initial breakthrough, the model of the intense sensual lyric McGuckian has fashioned for herself has difficulties in evolving in interesting new directions – though her imagination is so vivid and confident it is hard to see this state of ...”

“... statism of the Labour Party – whether in its Labourist, revisionist or Fabian mode – while it may provide people with what they need does not persuade them actively to seek it or to combine in the attempt. In other words, like Toryism, it encourages them to obey. Similarly, the exclusive attitudes of Labourism, its denial of legitimacy to other ...”

“... are bringing their shock troops out into the streets of Budapest’ – a fantasy which he may have believed and which legitimated the bloody suppression of the Hungarian uprising. Under Brezhnev, the KGB was partly sidelined, partly corrupted. He and his entourage, Kuzichkin writes, hated and feared the KGB because that was where ‘their real face ...”

“... been accused of condoning financial wrong-doing and cronyism in his administration. The LAPD may be incorruptible, but there is no question that some rooms in City Hall can be bought. Taking advantage of the furore provoked by the King tape, Bradley set up a commission into LA policing which drove Gates into resignation, effective July 1992. In his ...”

“... Moynihan Report was refuted, then it is not true; if only vehemently protested against, then it may be true, or not. Another way of looking at the problem is to see it as a confusion of discourses. The very language of the debate – ‘migration’, ‘ethnic’, ‘ghetto’, and, most strikingly, Lemann’s title, The Promised Land – is borrowed from ...”

“... Moreover, the letters which appear in the book are almost exclusively David’s to Debbie. This may imply that Mrs Owen vetoed the publication of her compositions, thus demonstrating a seemly New England reticence which is alien to the Celtic Doctor. A more likely explanation, I fear, is that Debbie kept David’s while David chucked Debbie’s ...”

“... hall entertainer. Swooping on a vulnerable target, she broke down any Calvinist inhibitions he may have retained, wrecked his marriage (not without assistance from the man himself) and carried him off to Caxton Hall, where she is supposed to have exclaimed afterwards: ‘I’ve done it! I’ve done it!’ Despite being (allegedly) pushed into an Amsterdam ...”

“... classroom time on Humanities and Social Science subjects. At any time a Caltech undergraduate may be taking up to five courses in widely different subject areas – all designed to make him (or increasingly her) a better all-round scientist. It looks like powerful ammunition for British advocates of modularisation, but there are some caveats. The intimate ...”

“... in the Comédie humaine is not without its dangers and induces a suspicion that Migne himself may not have existed in the normal sense. Worse still, a splendid photograph on the back flap shows the cigar-smoking author (who has also written a novel, Moses in the Promised Land) fly-fishing in the mountains, striking an epic, interrogative stance, as if ...”

“... are located. To spring neuroscience’s reductionist trap, an even more astonishing hypothesis may be ...”