“... of his or her past is ‘artificial’, Thorne states, adding that ‘if the characters are strong, we need only know what they’re doing now. Leave the psychoanalysis to the literary critics.’ Knowing what a character is doing is only the half of it – according to the rule that demands present-day settings, and real ‘products, places, artists ...”

“... must be fully describable in terms of material components. Porter shows the initial power of strong Hobbist materialism (together with the dismay it provoked in pious breasts) and then, as problems multiplied, the shift from physiology to psychology, followed by a convulsive shift to idealism, as we reach the great English Romantics, Blake and ...”

“... inspiration, for in general the ends of Dryden’s poems, long or short, are as supple and strong as their beginnings. Absalom and Achitophel is the essential index of Dryden’s wide capabilities and achievement as a great poet. Graciously argued, and subtly elegiac in tone, The Hind and the Panther is equally skilful at recommending itself in high ...”

“... opponents. Burton makes matters worse by drawing far too heavily, for the early period, on Simon Schama’s evocative Citizens (1989), which treated the French Revolution from start to finish as a ghastly, bloody mistake. He repeats many of Schama’s best stories, including the one about the giant papier-mâché elephant that Napoleon erected on the ...”

“... earnings are constructed through the practice of accountancy. However, Callon also claims a strong performative role for academic economics. Friedman, for example, has not simply analysed markets but helped create them, starting in 1972 with the world’s first currency futures exchange, the International Monetary Market. Those influenced by Friedman ...”

“... observations which epitomise the art of film come in as asides, as when, writing about Michel Simon, he invokes ‘the special mingling of self and character that is so necessary (and dangerous) in screen acting’. (This, by the way, is a rewrite. In the previous edition it read: ‘the special mingling of self and character that is so hallucinatory in ...”

“... and learn abstract concepts. ‘If one could devise a successful chess machine,’ Herbert Simon and others suggested in 1958, ‘one would seem to have penetrated to the core of the human intellectual endeavour.’ Combine this with its clear measures of success and readily formalised rules, and chess seemed to offer the perfect testbed for artificial ...”

“... own disappearance by leaving a pile of clothes on a Miami beach (forgetting the absence of tides strong enough to carry his body out to sea). He later resurfaced in Australia, then returned to England, where he joined the English National Party before being jailed for seven years on 21 charges of fraud, theft and forgery. He died in 1988. More than twenty ...”

“... the encouragement of his children, three formidable volumes have appeared, admirably edited by Simon Heffer, with profuse footnotes displaying considerable scholarship and intermittent pedantry.As Heffer says, Channon was seen as ‘trivial, snobbish, shallow and profoundly lacking in judgment’, a toady to the rich and royal, and, according to Nancy ...”

“... Shakespeare’s sexuality remains obsessively dominant. Burgess has always looked for a ‘strong male thrust’ in literature, and, in Shakespeare, he enshrines that principle in the name of his hero, Will. Glossing the sonnet ‘Who euer hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,/And Will too boote, and Will in ouer-plus,’ Burgess writes: ‘Will ...”

“... a sort of left opposition to MacDonald. In the gathering world crisis of the Thirties there was a strong left-wing movement, and the ‘Red Squire’, Sir Stafford Cripps, was expelled from the Party. But Hoggart and Leigh are right to stress that internecine strife took on a new dimension in the 1950s. What had changed was that, through the war ...”

“... for money to pay the fare into New York to meet a publisher. I can still remember the day when Simon and Schuster came to lunch (and my own bewilderment that they turned out to be a single person), and the overwhelming relief in the household when they happily departed. The result was The History of Western Philosophy. The tension, and the urgency, which ...”

“... specialists. Politicians would then be free to argue about issues such as foxhunting, which arouse strong emotions but leave undisturbed ticklish questions of economic and social power. Brown’s surrender of the Chancellor’s command over the cost of mortgages and other loans will not depoliticise economic policy. But it does send an unmistakable signal ...”

“... statist Webbs admired the achievements of municipal socialism, so Blair was drawn to the idea of a strong city identity. Seduced by the dynamic example of Rudy Giuliani’s New York City Hall, he argued that ‘strong civic leadership could help restore some of the much needed civic pride in London.’ There was, however, a ...”

“... turn my back. What is it that makes this discomfiture inescapable? Evidently, Bloomsbury makes a strong salespoint because it’s a story with a strong mixture of ingredients: sex, friendships, betrayals, glam connections, nice locations, eccentric personalities, the odd suicide, a touch of politics, more sex ...”