“... was elected with Dickens), Babbage’s parties (to which he took his sister ‘that she may see the World’) and dinners with the literati, including Carlyle, who nauseated Darwin with his bombastic mysticism. There are darker moments too: Emma’s worry over his religious doubt, and Darwin, intermittently ill, fearing that he would do no more in ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... the window to be covered by a sheet, which was eventually replaced by net curtains. Other inmates may also have set to work manufacturing the escape gear in the TV room, where the windows were shaded in greater style by Venetian blinds. The windows to the gymnasium were obscured by a large refrigerator. Not even the perspicacious Sir John seems to know the ...”

“... the foreseeable returns of investments in Guinea or in China. Sloane imagined that nations may always have lived by such a commercial code. Siberian relics of mammoth tusks could not be Roman burials, he judged, because ‘no one would be so ridiculous as to bury their ivory teeth, which are of high price with all nations.’ Sloane’s ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... for her only by browbeating the poor woman out of her fondness for the music of Simple Minds. Rob may be a bit sad and infantile himself, but at least he’s not as far gone as these two. At least he has managed to find a way of turning his obsession into an act of communication. And so, at least he manages to get stable sex. Or did, until this morning. The ...”

“... which she was born. ‘What exactly is a harem?’ she recalls herself worrying as a child. Harems may depend on a critical distinction between inside and out, but it proves far from easy, as Mernissi discovers, to know just when one has crossed the line. In The Harem Within Mernissi describes how she and her young cousins used to retreat to the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... state is treating stupidity not as an evil but as a valuable commodity, the production of which may be encouraged in order to increase revenue, as though stupidity were a good in its own right. There is no attempt here, as there is in the case of cigarettes, to balance the amount of money raised against the merits of the behaviour which allows the money to ...”

“... 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 ...”