“... unpublished journals, hints that his reservations about a complacent liberal imagination may have emerged from painful self-awareness – even self-disgust. The thought that he had ‘one of the great reputations in the academic world’ made him ‘retch’. Envious of Hemingway, and harried by his wife, Diana, Trilling confessed periodically to ...”

“... The significance of this idea can perhaps best be expressed by a short sequence from what may be the most overlooked great British novel of the 20th century. Early on in Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s Book, the junky narrator embarks on a strangely Proustian sequence of perception and recall in which, watching a man urinating in a New York alley, he ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... then flow out into us, in the audience. In Medea, the chorus tremble with fear at what Medea may be driven to do; they are also dismayed by their own powerlessness – the plight of all women. The conductors of our responses, they lead us to compassionate her, to use the Italianate word Mary Shelley gives the Creature when he begs Frankenstein to treat ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Anglo-German Fellowship. He had several conversations with George VI during the Munich crisis and may well have helped persuade him to back the deal that forced Czechoslovakia to let itself be dismembered by the Nazis. The king was obliged to accept his advisers’ warning not to welcome Neville Chamberlain when he arrived at the airport brandishing the ...”

“... impose peace and justify your sway,Spare those you conquer, crush those who overbear.There may be anti-imperial anti-artistry here, and perhaps ‘to you will fall the exercise of power’ and ‘justify your sway’ are designed to make it sound as though the Roman Empire was acquired in a fit of absent-mindedness and could only be defended by ...”

“... the Middle East, thousands of unarmed protesters marched on Israel’s borders on Nakba Day, 15 May, the annual commemoration of the flight and expulsion of three-quarters of a million Palestinians from their lands and homes in the 1948 war. In the West Bank itself, new tactics were being used. Late in the same year, a group of young Palestinian activists ...”

“... he wrote that, in the US, ‘all the resources of science are applied in order that imbecility may flourish and vulgarity cover the whole earth.’ Early Huxley, the satirist who delighted in admonishing the world, displayed an aversion to most forms of 20th-century popular culture. Jazz was ‘brassy guffaw and caterwauling’; movies banal, empty ...”

“... that Tracey is tied to the requirements of bedtime, shared custody and lunch money in a way she may never be. Time swings, advantage changes hands, but comparison, as structuring force and engine of meaning, remains. As Swing Time reached its climax, it began to remind me of the middle section of Smith’s last novel, NW, the part presented in numbered ...”

“... pose of asceticism and indifference to luxury was deceptive. He never carried a wallet and may not even have used a bank account, but he enjoyed a fat private income, mostly from Mein Kampf royalties and later as a percentage from sales of postage stamps with the Führer’s head on them. Although he couldn’t drive – or swim or dance – he adored ...”

“... and apparent lack of strong leadership. Tyndall’s increasing pessimism about national life may also have been connected to his state of health, which from the late 1870s seems to have been appalling. Was this decrepitude due to overwork, carelessness, insomnia – or even marriage? At some stage – as C.H. Creasey and A.S. Eve hinted in their 1945 ...”

“... is officially equal to one US dollar but the actual black-market rate is around 3.6 to 1, and may have changed by the time this goes to press. In October, for a single week, inflation rocketed and people with bond cash rushed to spend it before it became worthless: there were runs on alcohol in the supermarkets, and shoppers were limited to a single can ...”

“... harmonic prologue. His correspondence with his father was now painfully businesslike. In May 1787 Leopold died, and Mozart allowed his relationship with Nannerl to drift. The only life that interested him was Vienna and Constanze – and the world of secret codes and rituals of his local masonic lodge, for which he wrote several works (all of them ...”

“... example:French Marxists are still French in their intellectual style. Ideologically, they may have a lot in common with communist Chinese or communist North Koreans. But in style of reasoning and in the idiom of his thought, a French Marxist has more in common with a French liberal than with fellow communists in China and Korea. And that is why a ...”