“... Gallery with the resounding slogan, ‘Patriotism is not enough,’ that I realised Cavell was English, not Belgian. But like Joan of Arc, she embodies a form of female independent-mindedness and courage and adventurousness. Both women stretched my horizons far beyond the dull observances of Uccle, and their experiences, even though they ended in horror ...”

“... gives her argument its delectable polemical edge (what a glorious bunch of dunces inhabit English departments!) but also limits her ability to compel unalloyed assent. That Bernhardt CD, after all, was an awful lot of fun: can’t we make one last foray into the flames to get it? None of which is to say that Acocella’s central points have lost ...”

“... down and going down, though there’s no doubt which one the audience prefers. 22 January. Take Richard Buckle’s autobiography, The Most Upsetting Woman, out of the London Library in order to refresh my memory of the Diaghilev exhibition in 1954. Buckle had organised it and put it on first at the Edinburgh Festival (a much smarter venue then than it is ...”

“... about the degeneracy of the sociology department, it has also brought out a newer truth about English culture and its responsibility for the decline of the industrial spirit. Doubtless the westward flight of professors will continue as the Social Sciences and Humanities are incorporated into the new curriculum: a series of two-day courses in market ...”

“... 23 July 2002 surfaced in the Sunday Times detailing the conversations that the head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, had with his counterparts in Washington. It contained the killer quote: ‘The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.’ This confirmed, if confirmation were still needed, that Blair’s lie to the Commons was not a careless ...”

“... is famous for two things: her intense screen beauty and her many marriages (eight of them, two to Richard Burton). But at least as central to her life were her close and enduring friendships with men, some gay (like Rock Hudson), others heterosexual (like Farrell). Sometimes, Farrell took her to the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she had been ...”

“... itself. As Primo Levi wrote, ‘it happened, therefore it can happen again.’Are​ we, as Richard Seymour suggests, ‘in the early days of a new fascism’? In Disaster Nationalism, Seymour argues that in trying to understand the new far right, we have been looking in the wrong places. Parties and policy platforms, or the personalities of ...”

“... them for their preparatory school.But things go wrong with the education of her eldest charge, Richard.Richard was a beautiful child and, despite a proper interest in and aptitude for all the importances of outdoor life, there were times when he would lean in silence against Mrs Brock as she played the piano, or even ...”

“... form, and discover by follow-up research that vapulare, the verb in question, crossed over into English as the rare ‘vapulate’, though, when used at all, it tends to mean ‘to flog’ rather than ‘to be flogged’, so confirming the hint that there inheres in the process of verberation / vapulation the possibility of a measure of complicity.) All the ...”

“... version of ‘I need him in the (eye-)balls.’ There is also a great knockabout scene where the (English) cineast who cares only for austerity meets the (American) moviegoer who has never heard of any film made before The Godfather. ‘Don’t you think that Welles is rather overrated?’ ‘Definitely. I went there with Dad last month, and Bath’s a lot ...”

“... epic’. We might also compare him with the hero-villains of Shakespeare, with Brutus, Macbeth or Richard III, raging at the ghosts of their victims. Francis Phelan is not a pathetic old man: he is frightening. When we walk guiltily past the alcoholic tramps of Charing Cross, there are some who seem too degraded to be helped and others who seem too ...”

“... him to remain hidden, the man in the mask, detached, even disdainful. The walking embodiment of Richard Sennett’s 18th-century public man, Cuvier vigilantly kept up his public front in an age increasingly given over to effusions of Romantic sincerity and authenticity. The real Cuvier thus remains concealed for good behind the smokescreens of ...”

“... Contamine’s indispensable survey, War in the Middle Ages, now available in a welcome and clear English translation by Michael Jones, offers us a naming of parts for the study of war: ‘military skill, armament, recruitment, composition and life in the armies, moral and religious problems posed by war, the relationship between war and its political and ...”

“... in her book – and fully acknowledged. Readers who found Dr Hill’s recent book, Milton and the English Revolution, stimulating but not entirely convincing are likely to harbour similar reservations about aspects of Puritanism and Theatre. ‘Few playwrights,’ Miss Heinemann states, ‘seem to have experienced the close citizen and Parliamentary ...”

“... gal pal’ takes him by the bespoke elbow and murmurs: ‘This place is kinda nice – English.’ George is holding a copy of that morning’s Los Angeles Times, which reports details of the Rodney King trial. Now for all I know, George is so devoted to South Central LA that he holds a weekly acting workshop in Lynwood, but if he’s anything like ...”