“... at one point, and only debts made him sell them. That he so admired Smith’s angst-free canvases may say something about the feeling Epstein wished his own paintings to project. Smith achieved the kind of pleasure in colour and pigment which Epstein seems to be after. But Smith was a much better painter, and did not share Epstein’s attachment to the themes ...”

“... Home Affairs Minister, declared, after the shooting of Cusack and Beattie: ‘I feel that it may be necessary to shoot even more in the forthcoming months’? Had not the newly-formed extremist Democratic Unionist Party announced on the day before the march that they were prepared to give the Government ‘a final opportunity’ to prove their promises ...”

“... develop a more informed sense of what is at stake. For example, charges of Japanese protectionism may be justified, but the complex network of small shops which so frustrates Western exporters ‘has served social purposes such as stability, security and community preservation’. Trade negotiations, Miyoshi demonstrates, will only succeed if they are ...”

“... be an attempt to fashion a nationalist/populist Conservative Party further from the centre. Major may be feted by the Sun at the moment, but it isn’t likely to last, unless he makes a habit of sucking up to the far right. After the Tories lost 600 councillors in the recent local elections the paper announced JOHN’S GONE but shed no tears. Though it ...”

“... makes them seem a lot smarter than they –’ Puzo’s companion interrupts, because she feels it may not be too smart to keep saying this. There is another reason, more intimately connected to these particular stories, why the last Don can’t be the last. Each Don wants to be the last, wants his descendants to merge, after his death, into American ...”

“... the way to the 33rd parallel, only 30 miles from Baghdad. Whatever role the Saudis and Kuwaitis may also have played in these decisions (both are forever ready to repeat to Washington their version of the ‘Arabs understand nothing but force’ species of wisdom), the urgencies of the re-election campaign undoubtedly dictated the timing of the attack. As a ...”

“... James’s statecraft’ on Cymbeline, and gives a modest account of how such external knowledge may help the reader: ‘My claim is not that our apprehending this will make the play perfect but that it will make much of the play more explicable; the enterprise makes sense.’ Moderns might even glimpse something of what Hell must have looked like, to those ...”

“... die milkless and our men die ignorant. O Brahma! Deign to send us one of your gods so that he may incarnate on earth and bring back light and plenty to your enslaved daughter ...’ ‘O Sage,’ pronounced Brahma, ‘is it greater for you to ask or for me to say “Yea”? Siva himself will forthwith go and incarnate on the Earth and free my beloved ...”

“... of leading readers into a sentimental mood, the opening trap-doors beneath them. Literary critics may challenge some of Craig’s readings, indeed the way he reads, making relatively straightforward links backwards and forwards between life and art Historians, while recognising his erudition and individual insights, will question some of his broad ...”

“... just wanted a job, were, for Peter York, people who more than anything lacked imagination. And he may after all be right about that: somewhere in the air of the Eighties imagination became tied to money, a lot of it, and individualism was to do with the having and getting of it, the spending of it; personality was about how you expressed yourself as a ...”

“... for the ‘prosecution’ of Salvador Dalí he was dressed in bottle-green from head to foot). It may also have had something to do with Breton’s lifelong attachment to magic. The ink he used was turquoise, and Naville spoke of it as ‘that prairie-coloured ink that took the place of a magic potion’. The whole Surrealist project as defined and shaped by ...”

“... that gave support to, and were in turn explained by, such a hypothesis. Indeed, Schapiro may be said to have pioneered the social interpretation of what he called ‘disco-ordination’ in early and medieval art. But generalisation from these cases struck him as unfounded. How about those works of art where conventional and advanced elements are ...”

“... At that time, there were neither girls pining for a husband nor men without a wife. You may be fond of women, but so long as you share this fondness with the people, how can it interfere with your becoming a true king?’ As long as he was improving the lives of the Chinese people Mao’s behaviour was acceptable to Li. Once the doctor realised that ...”

“... public, written by most, but not all, of the same authors. The scholarly version is careful and may be better sociology, but is almost unreadable, being choked with platitudinous and pompous social sciences language, much of which means absolutely nothing: Overall, these profiles of sexual expression suggest that the interests and resources associated with ...”

“... with the more excruciating purities of the profession, is quite explicit that ‘psychoanalysis may be defined as a moral activity.’ She believes, despite what she calls ‘the sacred rules of psychoanalysis’, that analysts have got a lot to learn from novelists, that they are ‘all novelists manqués’; and that though psychoanalysis is not a ...”