“... around’ and ask why the state ‘condones life support’ for it, especially when prosecution may generate the glamour of martyrdom. It’s true that there has for many years been a web of statutes prescribing sentences up to life imprisonment for disclosing official secrets and for unauthorised possession of firearms and explosives. There is legislation ...”

“... rage – a ‘sacred French fury’ – against any invader from any quarter. On her feast day in May people were urged to walk the streets of ‘our towns and our villages’ – that charged little phrase – in ‘absolute silence’, not as a march or a cortège, but as families, groups of friends, individuals, ‘looking one another directly in the ...”

“... the gullible midget hero.’ This insistence on shining a new light on unlikely sexual relations may help explain why the original version of Freaks was heavily cut and edited and no longer exists; why the film, even in its edited state, was banned in Britain for thirty years; and why American audiences flocked to see it in some places ...”

“... in Lehman’s view, it seems probable ‘that the student with an authentic literary vocation may be the one who feels least at home with the academic orthodoxies of our day.’ According to an opposite scenario, theory owes its proliferation to large numbers of instructors and students who come to literature departments without much desire to read ...”

“... his famous revision of ‘or’ to ‘and’ in the line ‘We must love one another or die,’ may suggest a quick answer at the outset: song hopes to be ‘happy’ and to possess the knowledge of life. But to come so quickly to so glib a conclusion would rob us of the pleasure of enquiring into the fabric of the poetry itself.Hard-bitten, aggressively ...”

“... for and pities you.He bids you arm the long-haired Achaians for battlewith all speed, for now you may take the broad-streeted cityof the Trojans.This is a lie, because Zeus actually wants to punish the Achaians and doesn’t want Troy to fall, but since the dream comes from Zeus, Agamemnon reports it to his fellow leaders. The real Nestor is understandably ...”

“... peace agreement was tabled. And it very nearly succeeded. Everything hinged on a few weeks this May, when the Darfur Peace Agreement was finalised and signed by the Sudan government and one of the rebel factions. Had the leader of the main part of the Sudan Liberation Movement also signed, the current crisis would not have happened. To understand why Darfur ...”

“... Sanative steams, cordiall odours, a fragrancy on my clothes ; [the year’s first butterfly (4 May)] a nutrimental teeming influence, as frogs=spawn or jelly or sperma ceti; dropping in unseen effluvia, efflorescence & unctuous irrigation, ye Reall muck of the air, Rich magazine of Aerial dispensary, aura vitalis on earth’s longing womb. How ye ...”

“... me like screams to the angelic orders.For isn’t a foreign language the beginning of terror?May I ask the diva, if I briefly have her ear?The boys leaped, and in the maelstrom, towardsthe centre, one surfaced. The cross-bearer.He was borne on shoulders back to the pier,all handsome as cherubs halfway to turning seraphim.The crowd erupted in ...”

“... fully armed. He is probably on Zoloft. He is likely to be a virgin with a history of isolation. He may be into hurting animals, or like Death Metal music, and there’s a strong chance he will have been said to have Asperger’s syndrome or ADHD. The movies he likes will tell a story about him and his displaced sense of self. There ...”

“... the National Gallery in London. There are also new private collectors of Old Masters (Jeff Koons may be one of them). No mention is made of the changing market in ‘Modern’, which has in recent decades expanded to include a reappraisal of ‘Modern British’ – an area in which dealers, curators and collectors practise discrimination of a kind rarely ...”

“... of the dying Marcia in Barbara Pym’s own Quartet in Autumn). Those who are sceptical of this may prefer another kind of explanation, more sociological or even political. It would involve some comment on the adequacy or otherwise of publishers’ readers, and on the principles or otherwise of publishers themselves, and on the reality or otherwise of ...”

“... old.’ As if to say: Beware of the idea of The Future Today – that is, of Today’s Future; it may be a function of Yesterday’s Today, and you will discover that Today was always already Tomorrow, that there is no time for origination. Yet Thoreau’s idea is that time has not touched the thoughts and texts he deals in. What chance is there for us to ...”

“... a society which, on a racial basis, promotes certain groups over others. People who feel this way may have the intuition that barring race as a factor in assessment is a simple, effective way of avoiding an illicit racial hierarchy. A third tendency – the one that issues in affirmative action – is to believe that race must be taken into account to assist ...”

“... of meaning. A good translation typically involves more than that: a rhyming couplet, for instance, may need to be rendered by a rhyming couplet. And in any case, Wittgenstein’s concerns are purely theoretical. If one took them as guidelines, one might get the impression that the art of translation involves nothing more than devising a way of mapping the ...”