“... the killing of millions of ‘natives’, and of course slavery. Belgian rule in the Congo may have come to an end in 1960 but that doesn’t mean the effects of Belgian rule have also ended; and Belgian historians have only just begun to take account of what the country did in Africa. There seems to be no end to the aftermath of empire in the lives of ...”

“... are impractical. There are no coats on pegs here. If you can’t drive, you have to write. It may take years, time enough for a dozen train trips from London Bridge, but I’ll be waiting impatiently for Seabrook’s next ...”

“... is protected at this stage, and you can now go ahead and publish if you wish, but eventually you may proceed to a full (or utility) patent, where property rights are wrapped up more securely, and, while IP lawyers make fortunes from litigation about who in fact owns the property, basically the matter is now in the domain of formal law. If the university does ...”

“... But Yates reserves his special scorn for attempts to transcend this environment. Mailer’s terms may have been tough, but at least he offered 1950s man some alternatives: he must be hip or square, ‘with it’ or ‘doomed not to swing’. For Frank, lifestyle protest is not an option. His cellmate at work lives what appears to be an F. Scott Fitzgerald ...”

“... the battle, Tasso the poet of fear and the poet who feels fear recognises that his superhero may be about to fall prey to anger and a mass of pagan frailties. He fades out the fight with: ‘I cannot speak of every fearsome thing/ then done, which darkness hid from human eyes.’ This is the reason Tasso is out of favour: he sets up an opposition, blurs ...”

“... to the webbing between my child’s fingers. At least I hope it does. Rensberger worries that we may find the world of cells ‘miraculous’ – though he allows wonder. Most wondrous of all is the cells’ tendency towards self-assembly. Skin cells will form a sheet in the dish, breast cells will manufacture and secrete milk protein, and ‘muscle cells ...”

“... bricks and be called home by its inhabitants. At least for a while. The buildings in America may be on the move, but it’s nothing compared to the lack of fixity of the people. Even houses that are built in situ, in towns and suburbs, have, no matter what the diversity of architectural style, an air of slightly rackety impermanence, as if their original ...”

“... capable of both homosexual and heterosexual relationships ... We do not know – however much we may legislate on the subject – whether the normal sexual relationship is hetero- or homo- or bi-.’ In the same year Virginia Woolf, interested in her active engagement with the times, wrote to commission an autobiography from Holtby for the Hogarth ...”

“... tour of Finland) in a way that is supposed to have been licensed by Diderot himself. Yet Diderot may be a tricky fictional model. He himself recognised that what could give the Novel its generic power was psychological exactitude, especially in the hands of Samuel Richardson. Before Pamela and Clarissa, the term roman referred, he wrote, to ‘a tissue of ...”

“... streaming haplessly down his face. I tried to make conversation with him, but got nowhere. He may have been deaf, but I’m not sure. In any case, he seemed to me like a haunted version of his earlier self, his proverbial ugliness, his pipe and his nondescript clothing hanging about him like so many props on a deserted stage. I was very active in ...”

“... At the start of his presidency, Bush had paid little attention to Russia, which Condoleezza Rice may have presented to him as a potential ‘rogue state’. Then, in June 2001, he met Putin and suddenly decided that this little guy was a delightful buddy he could do business with. Agreement about the ‘coalition against terror’ prolonged the ...”

“... San Francisco. He got a great deal from his time with Winters and wrote about it at length in what may be his finest essay, ‘On a Drying Hill: Yvor Winters’. He wore glasses and smoked a pipe, and both of these adjuncts served to mask a face that was not in any case volatile. Pleased or displeased, he was most of the time thoughtfully of the same ...”

“... of Moorehead’s book reads like a long epilogue, though some readers – women especially – may find it the more affecting. Gellhorn never gave up. She drove herself into brick walls searching for a balance between love and independence, society and solitude, outwardness and inwardness, and was beset by a profoundly American indecision between the road ...”

“... both treasurer and leader of ‘the Union’, with Christabel directing policy. Lenton and Cohen may have been acting under their own steam but they had been fired up by Mrs Pankhurst’s inflammatory rhetoric and open incitements to violence. Though she insisted that targeted buildings should be empty and life was sacrosanct, she gave public blessing to ...”

“... and bring them to some type of justice. It’s generally referred to as a rendition.’ That may be what they call it in Washington, but there are no instances of ‘polite’ rendition. I believe the reason CIA veterans always claim that torture never crossed their minds when they politely picked people up is a genuine fear of being charged under the ...”