“... Murry wrote that the ‘denizens’ of Women in Love were lacking in individuality – though this may have meant that he couldn’t recognise himself in the book. Virginia Woolf described the Modernist experiment as an attempt to improve on Arnold Bennett and his contemporaries, who held forth in theory about the importance of character but failed miserably ...”

“... the question, but Barrett’s fear of her own aggressive energies and her drastic self-containment may well have had their analogues in the histories of other 19th-century female invalids. Of course the role could be adopted to a number of ends: among the most significant compensations it seems to have afforded Elizabeth Barrett was the freedom to devote ...”

“... stress to excel as her father’s hostess and perhaps was nicer than she sounds (as even Lizzie may have been). We should bear in mind that a niece is not on oath to her aunt. Apparently Isabella half-hoped to see her letters published and wondered whether to introduce ‘some bursts of fine writing’, an indulgence best left to Viceroys. John Keay, the ...”

“... remarkable in military history for the fact that there were no casualties on either side. Puisaye may have given the necessary orders for the posting of sentries but his failure to check that anyone was doing anything about it allowed his little force to be surprised and routed. When the revolt in Normandy collapsed he made his way west and became one of the ...”

“... in any way. Robinson, the Cape Times went on, should serve as a warning: ‘those who in future may acquire great wealth in this country will shudder lest their memories should come within possible risk of rivalling the loathesomeness of the thing that is the memory of Sir Joseph Robinson.’ It is ironic now to reflect that when Rhodes died he was regarded ...”

“... middle class, and this has no doubt caused many problems. A few Asians are back although some may be enterprising newcomers from the Indian sub-continent. However, the shops are mainly African-run. Some are amazing. One goes into a sizable store which sells cloth and the first impression is that there is a grotesque number of assistants. Wrong. Maybe ...”

“... book’s penultimate chapter. Tatlin’s wholly impractical monument to the Third International may not by any means have been the final triumph of Constructivism, but it did mark the climax of his influence within that movement; and it is debatable whether the ‘organic’ – i.e. curvilinear – design of his later works, like the equally impractical ...”

“... it all: he became involved in the politics of 1848, made a speech attacking the Court, and in May 1849 appeared on the barricades alongside Bakunin. By chance (again) he escaped being imprisoned and thus avoided a likely death sentence. The rest of Mein Leben describes Wagner’s exile, spent mostly in Switzerland, but with interludes in ...”

“... Raine’s poems present something more than a concatenation of metaphors, effective though these may be. They are most effective when drawn from one area of experience, grouped around a single event or figure, or unified by a strong narrative. The tradesmen from the ‘Yellow Pages’ of The Onion, Memory, ‘In the Kalahari Desert’ (for me, his most ...”

“... like Iraq for finding themselves automatically lined up on one side of the Cold War. When in May 1946 it had seemed as if the Canal was to go, the Chief of Staff had drawn up a reproachful inventory of all the Middle East countries, showing everywhere except in the Transjordan the uncertainty and fragility of Britain’s situation. Since the ...”

“... superior line on the advance and retreat of the entablature of St Mary-le-Strand (‘it may please the ignorant: but a judge would have been glad to see the entablature entire’), or to share his scorn for the pediment in the interior of that building (‘nothing can be so absurd’ as the ‘placing of an entire Pediment within-side a Building ...”

“... the only foreign country in which he urges American industry to invest, and who has (although this may be coincidental) even more Irish-Americans in his Cabinet than had John F. Kennedy. Like Carter, Reagan has been advised to raise the question of Ireland in general, rather than in specific terms: had he succumbed to the temptation to tiptoe into the ...”

“... Wales, in ways that can eventually be explained, is treated as a sort of final insult. This then may be the paradox. The English reader who wants to be better-informed about Wales itself can go to Jan Morris. The same reader who wants to know what, locked in with themselves, the Welsh have contributed and are contributing to European politics and letters can ...”

“... rhetorical advantage. But rhetoric only excites us and we need above all to keep calm. There may be more sinister and complex forces at work in the nuclear arms race than the need for the male to assert itself. The soldiers’ bottoms might more provokingly remind us of the part played by anality in the build-up of nuclear arsenals. ‘Cleaning up’ and ...”

“... later, when naming one of his most effective poems ‘The Penny Whistle’. Arthur Ransome in turn may well have recalled that poem, which evokes a charcoal-burners’ camp at night, when in 1930 he had the four Walker children, his ‘Swallows’, meet the two Billies, an ancient man and his elderly son, at work in the woods above their holiday lake. But ...”