“... shining sea. Given the primitive state of transportation and communication in the early republic, Thomas Jefferson anticipated that two or more independent nations would eventually come into being, though he hoped they would live in peace, unlike the countries of Europe. One political leader who apparently tried to act on ...”

“... Yevtushenko’s face, more cadaverous by the year, stares morosely from the flap of Wild Berries. The camera has evidently caught him thinking of his native Taiga, the Siberian tundra which forms the idyllic background to the novel. In fact, the background of Wild Berries, which is not the best ordered of narratives, rather usurps the foreground, and for much of its length the novel reads like over-the-top Intourist travel literature, aimed at rehabilitating a region associated in the foreign mind (at least) with exile, sub-zero temperatures and days in the life of Soviet dissidents ...”

“... brews quietly up within its own bowels,’ Huxley wrote, ‘few, it seems to me, are more deadly (while none appears more harmless) than that curious and appalling thing which is technically known as “pleasure”.’ Huxley recoiled from America’s embrace of manufactured pleasure. He believed that ...”

“... MacIntyre), or Marxist critics of liberal modernity (Theodor Adorno) – are more condemnatory. The second conception is typically held by historians, who have largely abandoned grand narratives of the Enlightenment. As they see it, the evidence is too complicated, and the totalising approach conflates political and intellectual ...”

“... role. Miller reflects on the difficulty posed nowadays by the introduction of devils and hell. Thomas Mann, modern enough, has his Faustian character succumb to syphilis and madness, and evokes hell in terms, chillingly authentic, of the concentration camps. In their appearance as Romantic heroes, rebels against religious law, social convention or ...”

“... axles at the Central Statistics Bureau. The Industrial Radicals have made Britain a richer and more egalitarian country: but they have also turned their information system into a political weapon, even making their enemies ‘disappear’ as in the Argentine terror of the 1970s. The plot of the novel, in brief, is that a freakishly hot summer has brought ...”

“... musical facts; and such subjective elements as enter into one’s commentary on music are neither more nor less damaging than those that occur in reference to any human activity. I cannot prove that my account of a problematical work like Beethoven’s Op.101 is unequivocally right. I can however demonstrate that it is a possible, even probable, deduction ...”

“... sort of life story that can be properly told in fifty words is not worth including. To invoke a more constructive example, the makers of the Christian creeds showed how pregnant economy – ‘crucified, dead and buried’ – could get around the problem. A further alternative would be to adopt the stylised format of Who’s Who or Debrett (Henry VIII, 2nd ...”

“... of tears:                   But he a few green eares: Ah Loyterer! I’le no more, no more I’le bring:                  I did expect a ring. The book, in her accustomed manner, is both elegiac and hopeful. It gives a sense of pity for lost opportunities, but at the same time a ...”

“... of the collection: The slab of aluminium he must cut is now anchored to the machine table with more than twice the torque required to keep extremely hard heat-treated tool steel from moving under the force of cutting. Reading such passages, one wonders whether realism really requires such fidelity to austere local idioms, whether indeed a ...”

“... the Glucksteins and their relations the Salmons, and the rise and fall of their commercial empire. Thomas Harding, a descendant through his mother, grew up knowing little about that side of his family; his book is an engaging blend of historical research and personal affection. The Glucksteins began as the Glücksteins in Jever near Bremen and seem always to ...”

“... themselves: the porcine and lecherous minister of culture, for example, played with fine relish by Thomas Thieme, and Wiesler’s superior officer, a cheerful, unscrupulous man of ambition, slyly played by Ulrich Tukur. But everyone else is worried. A shot of the Stasi archive, late in the film, reminds us why. Here are shelves after shelves of files, a whole ...”

“... as a Catholic schoolboy. Morris was Jewish, one of the first Jews I had ever met, making it even more embarrassing. Leavis, at this time, acknowledged Cambridge customs and proprieties by defying them. He wore a gown when the situation required it, but with shirt open, collar up, and no tie, and with the gown most of the time bundled over his arm. When he ...”

“... enough). The building is beautifully described by Bellow in Seize the Day. The Chelsea makes many more star appearances, but it’s the denizens of the place, their celebrity and sheer numbers – from Mark Twain through several generations of artists, cranks and druggies, to Sid Vicious – that warrant its reputation. Almost no one on the New York arts ...”

“... his subject’s significance as an archetype: he presents a shining vessel of high femininity, no more than lightly dusted with accidents of character. ‘Prudence (Minerva) Overthrowing Ignorance (or Sedition)’ (c.1632-33) Pieter Bruegel, Rubens’s predecessor as painter-philosopher in Antwerp, is acknowledged several times in the Royal Academy’s ...”