“... also rather astonishing to read that ‘the Hagana had no policy of driving out Arabs’ before 15 May, since the northern commander of the Hagana, General Allon, has described how, before that date, he ‘cleaned’ the Galilee of ‘tens of thousands of sulky Arabs’. The book has been carefully crafted to avoid charges of bias, and its supporters will ...”

“... power and established position, and that the notion of concessions to their independent demands may need rethinking. The concept of the aristocratic bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie apeing aristocratic airs and graces, is currently attracting attention in discussions of the formation of the middle class. It is a concept with problems about the evidence and about ...”

“... English has itself shifted in the last generation from the East to the West Coast, and even now may be heading farther west, out over the Pacific, blasted thither by the gale-force trade winds of the Japanese economic miracle. A rising tide of ‘Japlish’ notwithstanding, America for now sits prodigiously athwart the English tongue and the English ...”

“... points all the time. In matters of the NUJ and the Gas Board Levin’s rhetorical posturing may have some result. In matters of global conflict it can have no result at all, apart from the negative one of further distorting the truth. Levin sees great issues in the form of psychodrama. There are heroes and villains, with nobody in between. For all his ...”

“... it implies warped lives and ailing children. Look at it from a purely aesthetic standpoint and it may have a certain macabre appeal.’ Orwell was writing a tract, Priestley and Bainbridge are writing travel books. They are outraged by poverty, distressed by shabbiness and boredom, and appreciative of tolerance, variety and eccentricity. What they saw made ...”

“... Birkenhead’s rise seems less attractive, and his decline more pathetic, than ever before. He may have been the architect of his own advance, but he was also smith of his own misfortune. Like Lord Campbell’s earlier Lord Chancellors, there was ‘a sort of romance’ about him. But it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Lord Birkenhead’s ...”

“... translating the 46th Psalm, Shakespeare was copying Paley’s papers. Burgess and his reviewers may resent their conscription into the anti-Stratford camp, but the company is distinguished there. Hawthorne, after all, supported the speculations of Delia Bacon; and Freud underlined his significance as a literary critic by arguing that Shakespeare’s plays ...”

“... by those guardian laws, which bind the various orders of society in one common interest ... may the people, amongst whom I live, be withheld by stronger repellants than their own virtue, from invading my property and shedding my blood!!’ Knight was by temperament a stirrer, who enjoyed surprising and annoying the Establishment. But he was no blinkered ...”

“... are all about the (usually young) hero’s access to, or extraction of, some kind of capital. This may be achieved by violence, witchcraft, crime, trickery, patronage, by the ritual intimidation of charivaris, local protectionism designed to keep strange competitors out, or by getting the girl pregnant, as JLP does Babeau and Sestier does Garouille (a ...”

“... if it is supposed to be a history of Europe, then the digressions outside it, fascinating as they may be, are unnecessarily long. Yet when a book is at once as novel, as exciting and as illuminating as The Structures of Everyday Life, it would be a mistake for anyone except a librarian to worry about the category into which it should be placed. In the 15 ...”

“... point of turning into something more – something very much more – accept the fact that this may never be? And if there was once, when young, a romantic wish to die, and a courting of death, what then? Will there be guilt, and a dark attempt to shift the blame?’ These are not real questions. Long before we can dial through to Ontario and press our own ...”

“... the question I posed at the outset – the connection between Enlightenment and Revolution – it may well be because it was, all along, the wrong question to put. If, instead of characterising the Revolution as the harbinger of the New Era, one sees it as a convulsion of nostalgic desperation, and its protagonists, not as men with their gaze directed at a ...”

“... there with unparalleled richness and range of illustration. You see every human type, and may eavesdrop on some of the most deeply emotional moments in people’s lives: separations and reunions of spouses and sweethearts, soldiers off to fight in distant wars, families off to start a new life in the Dominions, honeymoon couples off to ... whatever ...”

“... which on the contrary asserts “where there’s death there’s hope.” This unique dissent may typify certain aspects of the island character.’ Fortunately, there isn’t too much of this kind of thing, and Lewis does not overstress those aspects of his situation with a potential for cliché (the relentless sun, the wise, enduring peasants, the ...”

“... At any rate, these three very different life-stories have little to say about how it may be possible to act upon political and economic structures in order to improve the prospects for a more general ...”