“... Britain had sent Russia in 1853: a reinforced fleet was despatched to the Constantinople area in May 1876, to signal that Britain would not accept the Eastern powers’ bullying of the Ottomans. The aim was to stop a Russo-Ottoman war, but in 1877 Russian domestic pressure, and Ottoman pride, proved too strong. Russia hoped for a swift victory to erase the ...”

“... she has had to cede the European stage to Starmer and Macron. In retrospect, the 2022 election may have marked the end of a period of exceptional electoral volatility, during which a tripolar political system seemed to be emerging. It was Salvini who brought voters with populist inclinations back from the M5S to the right, while the M5S itself has moved to ...”

“... from ‘this old Two Face, creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which every proposition may be affirmed or denied’. These stuttered antinomies capture his ping-pong between a bodiless idealism and a wry admission that nature ‘will not be Buddhist’ and ‘rushes into persons’. The gratuitousness of nature and the stubbornness of other people ...”

“... choice could be reconciled with ethical standards. The determining factor in her thinking, which may be compared with that of Jaspers in Germany, was the need for reciprocal freedom: if one wishes for one’s own freedom, then one finds it in the freedom of all. No type conduct is invariably right or wrong, and there are no fixed rules which free the ...”

“... is of snaring gods and goddesses, what do you do when you find one in your net? Whatever else may be possible, an equal relationship is not. The adorer wants to adore from below, and if denied this grows scornfully familiar. Like most players of Stephen Potter’s games, Tynan had difficulty finding friends to whom he felt equal. Either he felt cleverer ...”

“... Raw American chauvinism has always been an active element in Wolfe’s literary make-up, and one may doubt whether the eskimo in his igloo, the bedouin in his tent or the Englishman in his semi really lust for deep green marble floors, Tiffany glassware, five-foot-wide walnut staircases, private lifts and faux-Sheraton cabinets that roll back to reveal ...”

“... have had enough struggle to last a lifetime. The resulting mood is unmistakable. At the biggest May Day meeting on the Reef, held at the Rand Stadium in Johannesburg, the regional premier, Tokyo Sexwale, the ANC party boss, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the Secretary General of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), Sam Shilowa, launched bitter attacks ...”

“... at exactly the moment when his ‘Post-Modern’ disciplinary grandchildren would be all agog. It may be that in all this lies part of the explanation of why ‘Java Project Two’ in the once pristine ‘enchanted oasis’ of Sefrou, nestled beneath the High Atlas range, did not result in a Religion of Morocco. As Geertz mournfully writes, in 1963 ‘the ...”

“... since is only marginally connected to the sexual adventures of top Tories. The word ‘sleaze’ may be new, but the concept is not. British political history this century, from Rufus Isaacs to Horatio Bottomley to Maundy Gregory to John Poulson, is littered with great corruption stories. The explanation for the increase in sleaze under Thatcher and Major is ...”

“... November with National Grid, when he asked it to cut its revenue by £1.2 billion over four years, may be a sign that Littlechild is getting tougher. National Grid eventually accepted the reduction – and then gave notice that it would cut 250 jobs in addition to the 500 already proposed (as well as increasing the pay-out to shareholders). It is almost ...”

“... in English. I think the American ‘deep image’ school, writing poems with a small vocabulary, may think they are doing something comparable. But I don’t understand how people with a basically uncomplicated relationship to their own blameless language can think they are learning from Celan. ‘What a game!’ he once said, of ...”

“... blew up as they were fishing at Cuan à Bhòcan, the Sea of the Ghosts, south of Barra Head, on May Day 1897. Highland folk know very well that many of their forebears left their homelands by choice. So why had Chrissie said that her forebear Mary Ann MacNeill (née MacCormick) was ‘cleared’? Those last islands had been drawing me for most of my ...”

“... moving back to Ireland but she returned from her last visit disheartened. It was too late. This may have been the final blow, for in the strange years in New York during which she found herself steadily more marginalised by her age and temperament and by the beginnings of illness, she sank deeper into her past. But it was a past whose landscape and ...”

“... need to assuage their sorrows, get their revenge or enjoy the humiliation of the old order. There may be no way of disposing of painful history. The clerics tell us that we have to put it behind us if we want to get to heaven, but when it comes to history here on earth, maybe we have just got to live with ...”