“... grist to Constant’s radical mill, and he gleefully took on Bottom Dogs by the American writer Edward Dahlberg: a book so shocking that it was published in a limited edition of 500 copies with gilt tops at 15 shillings – double the normal price of novels. But when Arnold Bennett, then at the height of his fame as a critic, wrote that ‘it took you by ...”

“... a complex but initially local English identity. Before too many readers protest, let it be said that the foregoing paragraph is an experiment in taking an ‘Irish’ view, looking at English literature to see if it will conform to an Irish (or Scottish or American) model. The new books by Seamus Deane and Liam de Paor are judicious and informative in ...”

“... conductors, dramatists, poets, philosophers, historians, politicians with something to say, said it on air, without undue constraint though never extempore – even supposedly spontaneous conversations were carefully scripted. Music was balanced with talk in a six-or-so-hour sequence each weekday night. You could sit and listen to one programme after ...”

“... the introduction of a prices and incomes policy, 43 per cent are in favour of it. (Come back Edward Heath!) On several issues a substantial minority stand out against the orthodox view. In a Party that has done so well out of the first-past-the-post system it is heartening to discover that 23 per cent are in favour of Proportional Representation. Another ...”

“... showed them to be poor passionless creatures compared with him and Frieda. If in spite of what he said he sometimes suspected that regularly knocking each other black and blue was not an infallible sign of married happiness, he would have held the insight against Katherine. In his very mixed feelings about her, resentment played a large part. In the terminal ...”

“... of the 19th century could be counted on the fingers of one hand. In Sense and Sensibility Edward Ferrars, who has chosen to do nothing for a living and regrets it, reels off four possibilities:I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for ...”

“... points out, to insist that Cyrus, too, had been an Achaemenid, though Cyrus himself had never said anything of that sort. Darius became an even more dominant Great King and so, despite the possibly mythical status of Achaemenes, the rulers of the Persian empire became known as the Achaemenid dynasty. That the prize Darius won was worth fighting for hardly ...”

“... the butcher or the cattle.’ Why are there no counterparts to Twilight’s ethical vampire, Edward Cullen? Why are there no vegetarian zombies? (Well, undoubtedly there are some somewhere, but if so, they’ve never caught on.) Many zombies don’t merely want food, they want flesh – in the earlier films, human flesh, and lately any kind of ...”

“... Shakespearean scholar called Roland Verre, whose name implies that in him scholarly verity meets Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the real author of Shakespeare if you believe the idiots out there. Verre is brought in by Random House to counter Arthur’s sceptical annotations on what he has come to believe is his father’s forged play. The scholar’s notes ...”

“... 81 types of torture in all, from the barbecued St Lawrence to the skinned St Bartholomew, who is said in different versions to have been crucified upside down, flayed alive and beheaded. Jacobus opts for all three. Often it is only after a long series of torments have failed to dispatch a saint that the executioners cut off his head. The litany of holy ...”

“... those of countless other designer-directors, including Roller himself, as well as Jacques Copeau, Edward Gordon Craig and even Stanislavsky. Appia was above all a creature of the age of electricity, and for him the key to intelligent stage production was to have simple, lapidary sets subtly and imaginatively lit; lighting being the essential ingredient, as ...”

“... decades but was reopened in the wake of 9/11. ‘We have an opportunity,’ a police spokesman said, ‘to stop at least one more radical terrorist group from performing another act.’ There was no evidence that any of the SLA veterans had been involved in any kind of violent activity for two and a half decades. The SLA was not the only paramilitary left ...”

“... generally to Sidgwick’s disadvantage. The more important immediate influence was provided by Edward Benson, who was about to become an assistant master at Rugby and Sidgwick’s brother-in-law. Eleven years older than Henry, he seems to have been the prime mover in the decision that Henry should go to Rugby and then not to Balliol, but rather to Trinity ...”

“... known as ‘evolution’). But he made no great claims to originality. In a letter of 1860 he said that ‘no educated person, not even the most ignorant, could suppose that I meant to arrogate to myself the origination of the doctrine that species had not been independently created,’ adding that ‘the only novelty in my work is the attempt to explain ...”

“... the rank and file, but also to the skills of the medics who treated them. Here is the petition of Edward Bagshaw of Conisbrough, Yorkshire: The petitioner, being a soldier under Major Cole in Sir Philip Berron’s regiment in his late Majesty’s service, did at York receive many wounds and cuts in the head, insomuch that your petitioner had nine bones taken ...”