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“... before I bring him into St Mark’s Place, would imagine himself for a little time in a quiet English cathedral town.’ ‘Think for a little while of that scene, and the meaning of all its small formalisms, mixed with its serene sublimity. Estimate its secluded, continuous, drowsy felicities’; and, having done so, enter St Mark’s Place, where ...”

“... historical vision. Like Kafka, whose work she played a major role in having translated into English, she used matter-of-fact prose to dramatise a ‘nightmare world’ in which arbitrary decrees are palmed off as sacred laws. For better or worse, Arendt’s vision long ago lost its shocking novelty. Thanks to the memoirs of survivors like Jean ...”

“... outwitting Leavis about the meaning of Empson’s ‘Legal Fiction’, and declaring his ‘un-English’ refusal to accept Shakespeare’s ‘essential “greatness”’. And according to Hawkes, Wittgenstein’s remark implies not only that Shakespeare’s reputation results from conventional praise rather than any inherent value, but that ‘no text ...”

“... in Austin, Texas, undoubtedly at the initiative of Professor Wm Roger Louis, whose Kerr Chair of English History and Culture at the University of Texas was one of the two principal sponsors (along with the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library), although the president and staff of the hyper-rich Pennzoil Company and sundry U of T outfits are also thanked for their ...”

“... other; indeed, I made my own grammar of the poetic dialect as I went along.’ A century later, Richard Bentley – the founder of historical philology who took Scaliger as his model – used his own granular mastery of Greek literature to show that the letters ascribed to the tyrant Phalaris must be a later composition. His critics at Christ Church replied ...”

“... But the winning political coalition forged by FDR was shattered in the 1960s and 1970s, and under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan American politics took a conservative turn. Democrats are still divided over how to respond.Today, an air of foreboding hangs over the party. Despite the rapid economic recovery from the pandemic, Joe Biden’s approval rating ...”

“... refused access.Biographies convince us by being authoritative rather than objective. The musician Richard Witts, whose biography of Nico was published in 1993, was asked by her to write her life. She wanted him to make it like a novel and he did, dramatising postwar Berlin, Paris in the 1950s, New York and London in the 1960s and 1970s, Manchester in the ...”

“... agenda. Medievalist Wissenschaft (the term has scientific connotations largely absent from the English word ‘scholarship’) was grounded in philology. Ethnic identity was defined by linguistic identity: a German was the speaker of a Germanic language and German identity thus extended to Spain, North Africa, the Netherlands and Italy – areas that had ...”

“... copy of Chase’s book, the officers of the Essex ‘knew not that for more than twenty years the English … had been resident in Tahiti; & that in the same year of the shipwreck – 1820 – it was entirely safe.’ The two mates argued for a different plan: the three boats would sail south for 1500 miles, until they were out of the trades and into a belt ...”

“... lower-class Indian – Merchant himself was convinced that this was ‘a matter of record’: Sir Richard Burton ‘had done exactly that again and again’. Merchant was educated at St Xavier’s College in Bombay before leaving for the US in 1958, and was clearly not so sceptical about colonialist claims of conducting a mission civilisatrice in the way that ...”

“... in the decade. By 1950 change was coming. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex was published in English in 1953. There were increasing opportunities for women who were bold and determined enough to take them. Yet for all Cooke’s justified satisfaction in finding so many possible subjects from which to make her selection, the cumulative effect is to ...”

“... autonomy, inner responsibility, moral obligation and so forth’, ‘deniers’ like Richard Rorty who were inclined to reduce talk of the true and the right to what we find it convenient to believe – were discomfited by his dazzle. But in fact he was a constructive man. Shooting an idea out of someone’s hand as soon as it came up, he would ...”

“... miles away, immersed in philology and comparative jurisprudence. His friends or admirers, from Richard Price to Mary Wollstonecraft, might be making trouble, but at least he wouldn’t be replying to Burke’s Reflections. There wasn’t much danger of Jones fomenting unrest in India. Franklin makes persuasive analogies between the subaltern peoples whose ...”

“... In most Shakespeare biographies Ann has no life; while her husband is off changing the course of English literature (when not dallying with dark ladies and young men) she sits at home, unoccupied for thirty years or so, awaiting his return. Many even doubt whether she could read or write, while few have given much thought to how she might have been ...”

“... for electoral reasons. The desirability of owning one’s house has a long history in all English-speaking countries and there are good social arguments for private ownership. But there is a thin line between social desirability and political calculation, and Thatcher crossed it with complete insouciance. The mandatory sale of council housing was ...”