“... Luckily, they landed hundreds of metres beyond our position. After 40 minutes, we heard an F-16 arrive and one of the soldiers who was crouching in a small ditch and sweating heavily said: ‘That is the sweetest sound in the world.’ We could see the undercarriage of the plane as it passed us and fired missiles just beyond a building a hundred metres ...”

“... them are old Guardian hands with many years’ experience of reporting Egypt and the Middle East. David Hirst, along with Eric Rouleau of Le Monde, is one of the few Western journalists to have received the Edward Said Seal of Approval. Irene Beeson lived for 16 years in one of the poorer districts of Cairo, and knows its people intimately, Together they have ...”

“... culture. A still more obvious place to look for solid fare is the source book assembled by David Burnley in The History of the English Language. This is, in effect, an anthology of English written between the ninth century and the early 20th. The passages are well chosen both as representative samples of their time and as having inherent ...”

“... image handed down in history books and conversation, which is plainly not good enough.’ It is David Bromwich’s aim in The Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke that people should know a good deal more about what Burke actually said and wrote. This is the first of two projected volumes; the second will cover the two great causes of Burke’s later life: the ...”

“... Some years ago, the novelist David Foster Wallace submitted himself to a long television interview with Charlie Rose, the PBS chat-show host. It was a terrific performance, and in it Wallace talked about why, in much of his work, narrative is split into body-text and footnotes: There’s a way, it seems to me, that reality’s fractured right now, at least the reality that I live in ...”

“... portray the Zionist pioneers waging a war of independence against the British oppressor. Jon and David Kimche provided a good example of the conventional Israeli analysis of British policy in Both Sides of the Hill: Britain and the Palestine War (1960). ‘It was a mixture of ignorance, blundering, indecision and local bias against the Jews, encouraged by ...”

“... of it), refuelled by access to new material and a reduced fear of libel. Of the seven children of David and Sydney, Lord and Lady Redesdale, six were girls; the Mitford industry revolves, lighthouse-like, between them. Nancy, the novelist, wit and Bright Young Thing, comes to prominence whenever her books are dramatised; Unity and Diana, the Nazis, are ...”

“... David Runciman, Neal Ascherson, James Butler, T.J. Clark, Jonathan Coe, Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Daniel Finn, Dawn Foster, Jeremy Harding, Colin Kidd, Ross McKibbin, Philippe Marlière, James Meek, Pankaj Mishra, Jan-Werner Müller, Susan Pedersen, J.G.A. Pocock, Nick Richardson, Nicholas Spice, Wolfgang Streeck, Daniel TrillingDavid RuncimanSo who​ is to blame? Please don’t say the voters: 17,410,742 is an awful lot of people to be wrong on a question of this magnitude ...”

“... such as either imputes guilt to the accused before they even make it into the dock – as with David Blunkett’s recent disgraceful remarks about the terrorist suspect in Gloucester – or else works itself up into a populist frenzy of innuendo during the proceedings. On the same occasion, Lord Goldsmith endorsed the complaint of the judge in the Huntley ...”

“... It’s also the only one of Clancy’s books to have been graced with a review in the LRB. David Rieff concluded: ‘America loves Colonel North and Colonel North must love Red Storm Rising. I would ban it if I could’ (LRB, 3 September 1987). I don’t suppose the presence of Jack Ryan would have eased his mind much. Ryan’s career has been filled ...”

“... across the Daily Telegraph on 13 June were pictures of the eminent novelist in sports kit that David Beckham might not be ashamed to be seen in. Pilates, we learn, has changed Martin Amis’s life. It’s got him onto the health pages of the Telegraph, for one thing. ‘It’s a bit girly, but it really works,’ he enthuses to Victoria Lambert as she ...”

“... David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath (Regency dress parade, bonnet-making workshops, ‘Tea with Mr Darcy’), submitted opening chapters and plot synopses of Austen’s novels to 18 British publishers and agents, changing just the titles and characters’ names. Lassman was ‘staggered’, he told the Guardian, when he received form letter rejections back ...”

“... In these sittings it happens to be me, but for Julia Auerbach, Jake Auerbach, Catherine Lampert, David Landau (and the predecessors, most notably Gerda, Estella Olive West and Juliet Yardley Mills) – for all of us – the role is practically the same. We are there to enable him to perform. We keep him occupied. Drawing is the concern. Drawing voluminously ...”

“... Black bohemia, especially its musicians. (She was briefly married to the tenor saxophonist David Murray, Hemphill’s bandmate in the World Saxophone Quartet.) Raised in Columbus, Ohio, she settled in New York City in the early 1970s, after studying microbiology at Howard University. While modelling to make ends meet, she became the only female member ...”

“... common in songs do not often get into pictures.Melancholy has a longer history. Caspar David Friedrich’s young man who stands, back towards you, looking out to sea could be suffering from it. Hopper’s men and women are ordinary Joes away from home or staying late at the office – lonely, a little sad, a bit miserable perhaps. His unpeopled ...”