“... Artifice. In spurning both a polemical introduction and the biographical notes, this anthology may define itself against the run of post-war anthologies, but it does no favours for its contributors, whose work, itself doing no favours for the unprepared general reader, looks to have been written according to a set of undisclosed codes and precepts. It is ...”

“... the six-page sportive essay, he brought to perfection. That the form has now more or less died may be partly because Perelman did it so well there was nowhere left for it to go. One of his most treasured accolades came from Robert Benchley, who wrote that Perelman did to our weak little efforts at ‘crazy stuff’ what Benny Goodman has done to ...”

“... that removed her from life, but in a different sense to the one she intended. Margaret Forster may have been right not to select from Aurora Leigh in her choice of the poems, since she could not give it all, yet the first part of it shows most about what might be called, in relation to Elizabeth and her husband, the Browning method. How intensely bookish ...”

“... Emerald Cunard remarking to Cyril Connolly that Hemingway struck her ‘as androgynous’. ‘You may think it bizarre of me.’ she added, ‘It is not the mot juste perhaps. But that is how he struck me.’ Bizarre no more. For if Lynn occasionally pushes the envelope (as they are supposed to say in test-flying circles) his thesis convinces. Why is it ...”

“... has ridden out many revolts before now. The Pope’s extraordinary claims to moral authority may have received some challenge in Managua but that hardly constitutes three falls and a submission. What beats me is that O’Brien should ever have expected the Pope to behave differently: the man gets a weekly briefing from the CIA’s Rome ...”

“... Where were John Stalker’s principles then? This brief diversion into Greater Manchester affairs may help to put the Stalker controversy into some kind of context. The parallels are not coincidental. They stem from an overriding belief in the Police establishment that they know best, and from an implicit understanding that the ends justify the means. The ...”

“... imposition of the fraud. On the contrary, his now legendary staying-power is compatible with and may even depend upon a widespread popular acceptance of a gap between performance and reality. The reality never comes into focus – even Rogin hesitates to say whether Reagan is the unconscious instrument of psychosocial forces beyond his control or the cunning ...”

“... many who do not share its views. The authors conclude, with some reason, that while the Eighties may be the decade of Mrs Thatcher, they have not been a decade of popular Thatcherism. The 1987 survey also throws light on another aspect of politics which has returned to centre-stage in early 1988 – the Liberal-SDP Alliance. It suggests that the attitudes of ...”

“... as part of the content of any serious work – a collapse given a final push by the events of May’68. As a variety of cultural spaces were then requisitioned and occupied by their users – students at the Sorbonne, for example – and as the authorities began to move against these occupations, two things became clear to the participants. One was that ...”

“... seemed exhausted, and now we find ourselves obliged to renew our vigilance, because the process may continue. The simulator’s mock-academic investigation of the ‘meaning of life’ has effectively bypassed the more problematic, overworked ‘meaning of living’. Casey’s own interest in a materialist form of transcendence eventually led him to ...”

“... it will be a waste of my time making an application for bail because no matter how sympathetic he may be to the arguments advanced on behalf of my client, he is not prepared to grant it, even technically, because Mr X is a serving prisoner. His decision is expressed in fluent legalese with mention of statutory powers and sub-sections of the Bail Act and is ...”

“... conditions of Fascist Italy (the Racial Laws were enacted in 1938) and the imminent threat of war may well have shaped these choices and given rise to an encoded quality in the writing. But how hermetic are the poems? Arrow-smith appended voluminous notes to his translations. Galassi, too, includes 170 pages or so of notes in small print, quoting from a range ...”

“... to Oklahoma City, LA does not become the new tornado capital of the United States. No, Los Angeles may not have the exceptional ecology that Davis claims, but yes, science and not fiction discovers the natural hazards in its erratic environment. Ecology of Fear would lose none of its force if it stuck with what it does so well, excavating the hidden history of ...”

“... for him to impose his mistress, Lady Jersey, on his wife as her lady-in-waiting was odious. George may have come to be called ‘the first gentleman of Europe’, but he was not, as the Duke of Wellington is said to have told him, a gentleman. At his famous first meeting with Caroline, she evidently smelt; he called for brandy and then boorishly left the ...”

“... to mid-Forties, Orwell’s scolding certitudes – his ‘honesty’, his ‘decency’ – may well have grated on the nerves; and not just because he was so good at sniffing out hypocrisies. A natural sceptic, Orwell rarely seemed to be in doubt, and he had no patience with the routine ifs and buts of political discourse. Quite a few people who knew ...”