“... in relation to her brothers to sour their relationship although she was not blind to it. She may never have known the extent to which they manipulated the family property to exclude her, but it was no more than the truth when she wrote in a rare outburst in a letter in 1950 that she had never had anything ‘excepting what I made for myself … I was ...”

“... a very long day to egress on foot: if you leave at around 7 a.m., and are reasonably fit, you may find yourself in open fields late that evening. Following Connolly, what this says about London I’m not absolutely sure: all I do know is that after doing a couple of these radial walks – first northeast, then due south – I was altogether more grounded ...”

“... human rights groups the next. It’s a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it’s indefinable. This fusion of despotism and postmodernism, in which no truth is certain, is reflected in the craze among the Russian elite for neuro-linguistic programming and ...”

“... the Greens, at least, of Decontentification. They alone seem to know what they want, and they may be well rewarded for that in ...”

“... He knows ‘comment ils se sont faits et comment ils auraient pu ne pas se faire’. Baudelaire may be subliminally pondering his own weirdness or monstrousness here. In an essay of 1930 Eliot argued that Baudelaire ‘attracted pain to himself’, and that while he had ‘great strength’, it was strength ‘merely to suffer’. Certainly there is no ...”

“... manifesto says, is to construct ‘a craft that will convey us into death in such a way that we may, if not live, then at least persist’, with one example of such a craft being ‘the rehabilitation of sacrifice as an accepted social ritual’. From this perspective, it’s not important whether or not McCarthy’s novel is reviewed well or badly, allowed ...”

“... fears that it was the British Empire’s soft underbelly. How far would the French penetrate? In May 1798 the revolutionary republican movement known as the United Irishmen kicked off a rebellion, triggering revolutionary, counter-revolutionary, agrarian and sectarian violence on a scale unmatched since William’s day. In August, the diplomatic efforts of ...”

“... you can’t really read an Ellis book without thinking about his whole career. If you don’t, you may end up dumping him into one of the convenient pigeonholes (brat, druggie, pervert, creep, minimalist) that have already been created for him. Ellis has the gift, or perhaps the curse, or perhaps the tactic, of being able to hide in plain sight: his novels ...”

“... In 1916, according to Geoffrey Jones, a business historian, only ‘one fifth of Americans may have used any toiletry or cosmetics.’ This would mean that four fifths of Americans used neither toothpaste nor shampoo, never mind moisturiser or deodorant, lipstick or hair gel. In 1914, the total value of the American beauty industry, ‘excluding toilet ...”

“... staying shtum publicly, her death a surprise except to the few who knew. So Clive James (announced May 2011 – ?) and Diski (announced 11 September 2014 – ?) still battle it out for third place. In the other kind of race, last man standing, James and Diski would be meandering towards first and second place, Sacks and Mankell having already taken third and ...”

“... that Schacht was in control of German economic policy towards Spain. The economics minister may have been able to cling on to his job for a year or so after the Nazi intervention there began, but his position was being undermined by Göring even before the Four-Year Plan came into operation. As Leitz observed, in what is still the most thorough ...”

“... and al-Tabari: Muhammad made a pronouncement recognising the powers of three Meccan goddesses (and may have even sacrificed a lamb to one of them), an error he soon corrected after being chastised by the angel Gabriel. To determine what was reliable, Ali writes, Muir decided that if a story appeared in the classical sources and was unflattering, it must be ...”

“... from them.’ The solution God came up with was the ‘confusion of tongues’, ‘that they may not understand one another’s speech’. One tower-builder would now say, ‘Bitte geben Sie mir einen kleineren Schraubenschlüssel,’ and another would reply: ‘Non ho idea di quello che stai chiedendo.’ Exasperated, a third would ...”

“... is not a young man … There runs through all he says and does that vein of irony by which we may so often mark one of life’s self-acknowledged failures … a man of parts without character and with more wit than sense.’ The actor offers no comment, but by now he doesn’t need to. David Gates, the creator of these connoisseurs of disappointment and ...”

“... together in a French chicken coop. Paragraph 12 read: ‘Emotion clouds judgment; anxiety too. It may never happen.’ Ludwig is directed to a shabby hotel, already crowded with European refugees in many stages of crazy optimism, suicidal gloom or alcoholic resignation. Remarque readers will have been here before. The Hotel Rausch in New York is the Hotel ...”