“... syntax, what is essentially a pictorial style. But Titian’s Dianas, in conjunction with Ovid, may have offered a challenge to Shakespeare in terms of the goddess’s personality. According to Ovid, poor Callisto was betrayed by the very sexual tastes which Diana, ‘a kind of lesbian gym-teacher’, encouraged in her following, for cunning Jupiter had ...”

“... Africa is such that, by the time this review appears in print, the two books with which it deals may already belong to the past, both in their different ways witnesses to the haunted tensions, torture and bloodshed of the period of minority rule. The anthology of fiction, A Land Apart, was, say its editors, André Brink and J.M. Coetzee, ‘compiled amid the ...”

“... is having his first one-man show at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice: 15 February until 31 May. This is the book of the exhibition. Modern interest in Arcimboldo dates from his inclusion, by means of enlarged photographs, in the exhibition ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’, organised by Alfred Barr at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in ...”

“... in Britain and America. (Blake’s ‘Tyger’, first known to have existed in October 1793, may have drawn inspiration from the tiger’s ‘eyes darting fire’.) In the following decades, the death of Munro was recounted dozens of times, in volumes of natural history and books of instruction or cautionary tales for children. In A Short Description of ...”

“... from later historians the descriptions ‘wildly unhistorical’ and ‘wildly unstatistical’, may by 1843 already have begun to draw criticism. Its nine volumes of evidence selected to suit a party line must have taken some digesting even in a period which took Blue Books as literature very seriously indeed. In any case, the New English Poor Law which it ...”

“... radicalism works well on paintings which we interpret most immediately as rural idylls but which may also be felt to emerge ‘from a world of social and economic relations that are anything but idyllic’. A painting which seems to represent harmony between man and nature, and, more specifically, harmony between a landowner and the workers on that ...”

“... is designed to speak for one ‘level’ alone. Olmers and the Major, if less obviously than A&O, may represent aspects of Schmidt. The Freudian theory also has implications for the style of the work. Since for most readers of Evening Edged in Gold the author’s style is likely to be overwhelmingly the most potent source of pleasure or of irritation, it ...”

“... for the alliance of born-again social democrats and ancient political re-treads among whom he may be doomed to reside. He deserves better, and so does the book. It is written by a socialist, and for socialists. This is its first fascination. The sage of Morgan Grenfell will wince over its strictures on public expenditure and the role of government ...”

“... is conceivable that something irreversible is taking place. Today’s new wisdom about publishing may become as enduring, familiar and dispiriting as the truism of the decline of British cinema. That decline had much to do with television. Book publishing has seemed, hitherto, robust on this flank. The industry prospered in the 1960s, when television was ...”

“... offered by other scholars. Even if we allow for the restricted use of footnotes, which may not be the author’s fault, this seems to me unfortunate and unwarranted. The prime objects of his contempt are ‘abstruse iconographical interpretations’, and although most art-historians today share – or should share – a certain disquiet about the ...”

“... that the text he offers is precisely what the author wrote – an author, we must remember, who may have made any number of mistakes in usage, in grammar or in his thinking? The best answer possible is that there is (if there is) a consensus of expert opinion in the textual critic’s favour. It hardly needs saying that such a test does not warrant the ...”

“... while accepting its possible solipsistic and error-laden basis. For those accidents, that energy, may well issue from a personality that can’t be taken on trust. Indeed, as we shall see, Hill says as much: although ‘one’ would make the claim for a poet’s helplessness before language, something prohibits the claim from sticking, since that would ...”

“... are to be obtained. There you are sitting in France, and you suddenly feel that something strange may be about to happen, that there might be texts written half-way between France and Britain – all the more so as the British are one degree of consciousness ahead of the French. France’s own isolation and lack of curiosity are themselves notorious, and ...”

“... 18th century, can only be got at through the antechamber of his altogether individual style. You may love it, you may hate it, but you cannot overlook it. Reading Rawson, you’re forever being reminded of who it is you’re reading. What can be discovered, then, from the examples thus far? First, he delights in the ...”

“... its scope had to be limited. Surrounded by the barbed wire of polemic, MacDiarmid’s anthology may have seemed an angry piece of book-making. In retrospect what stands out is its inclusiveness. Here (in English translation) are the great Latinist George Buchanan and the Gaelic poet Alexander Mac-Donald. Duncan Ban MacIntyre’s expansive 18th-century ...”