“... that the Hebrew reads adam/l’adam and not, as it actually does, ha’adam/l’adam. All of this may well seem to ‘savour of curiosity’ as the Preface to the Authorised Version puts it, defending itself against the charge that it had not always translated the same Hebrew or Greek word with the same English word. ‘Is the kingdom of God become words and ...”

“... which also exists in a pastelised version (a drawing Degas made for that monotype in about 1880 may also have served as a point of departure for the figure of the boulangère): the bather monotypes of the late 1870s are themselves closely related to the brothel monotypes of the same period. There is evidence here of a systematic exploration, in various ...”

“... for in the family, and which her family so signally fails to develop in her. Be that as it may, she contrives to take an overview of her life across the years without losing a sense of the oddness, partiality and contingency of its shape. One striking example of this is her account of the (de) forming of her sexual life because of an infantile ...”

“... commanded from the mid-Sixties to the mid-Eighties, and points out that even coercive regimes ‘may rest on a general acceptance and sometimes enthusiasm’. The Wall that was built on the demarcation line between East and West Germany in August 1961 consolidated the power of the regime, while also forcing gaoler and gaoled to try and get along with each ...”

“... promise, vanity, constraint and fear. It creates intriguing and unpredictable consequences, which may occasionally be ‘solutions’ but usually throw up fresh problems and grievances. The political historian is not in the business of applying ‘progressive’ or ‘negative’ labels; his job is to explain assumptions, contexts and effects. Anyone who is ...”

“... lists of the authors and articles published and reviewed under Burke’s aegis. These compendia may strain one’s attention, but it is certainly worth pausing to consider one or two of them and reflect on the nature of a creative moment – and a publishing enterprise – which, within the space of a few years, commissioned Ezra Pound’s letters from ...”

“... to bits, refusing to let him learn it. The unique androgyny of the piano – or pianoforte – may account for this disparity. While we want it to be feminine (a lyrical stringed instrument), it’s also massively, and maddeningly, masculine (a percussive instrument), something Prokofiev but not Rachmaninov understood. And something Helfgott understands a ...”

“... his literary judgments, submit to being guided and corrected by the lesser man? Part of the answer may lie in the fact that their friendship was conceived within the sentimental conventions of an earlier day, a heady mix of Byron and Rousseau. Such friendships typically had their roots in the alienated idealism of early adolescence and included a high-minded ...”

“... behind just speed, Valium, alcohol and depression, that it might cause those of us who suspect we may be without a life to wonder if we want one after all. Celia Birtwell divorced him for incontinence with both sex (both sexes) and drugs, and when he beat her up she took out an injunction against him. He mourned the loss of access to his sons and the effects ...”

“... of the bourgeois parties whose splinters ultimately rallied to Nazism. This is nonsense. In May 1924 the Nazis won 6.6 per cent of the vote, but this had fallen to 3 per cent by December and to 2.6 per cent in 1928. Weimar weathered inflation. What cast it down was the 1929 Crash and Depression. By 1930 the Nazis were up to 18.3 per cent and by July ...”

“... a young American heiress, who is waiting for the sick and debauched countess to die so that she may assume the title. As Lucio points out, the Earl also has a ravishingly beautiful daughter, Lady Sybil, who like all daughters of the aristocracy is up for sale. The tiresome Tempest, however, still hankers to have his rejected novel published, so the Prince ...”

“... is hard to imagine, however, that de Man is bedside reading for the theory-allergic Heaney.Words may not be things, but the poet, like the small child making its first sounds, is one who invests them as though they were. There is thus something regressively infantile as well as dauntingly mature about poetry, rather as the grandeur of the imagination is ...”

“... to be a copyist for Frederick’s uncle, the learned Bishop Otto. Otto was a pupil of Abelard (‘may God have mercy on this man who sinned greatly but also suffered and expiated’) and believes that he lives in ‘new times’, when ‘the man of learning’ is becoming more and more important. He is preoccupied with stories of the fabled realm of Presbyter ...”

“... over this attack and made the James brothers proxies for the persecution of ex-Confederates. This may have worked, but it was opportunistic. The James Gang gained sympathy not because of their actions, or Edwards’s support of them, but because of the actions taken against them. It is this that led to the amnesty bill that was nearly passed by the Missouri ...”

“... still in his twenties Fried had become a leading critic of contemporary art, an occupation which may not sound very different from being an art historian, though perhaps less respectable. Yet from Baudelaire onwards, an engagement with contemporary painting has been vital to some of the greatest poets; and the best art critics, aside from those who were ...”