“... which has to end an essay like this: ‘Even philosophy’s insistence on clear and distinct ideas may express this “ineluctable modality” of the perceptible that makes what we call representation the unexcludable middle between phenomenal reality and mind, between thinking in images and thinking by means of texts against them.’ This is a dour ...”

“... between text, meaning and significance: carucatum means ‘ploughland, land for a plough’; this may signify a plough, a plough-team of eight oxen, enough leasowe and winter feed for eight oxen; and it also, or alternatively, signifies a fiscal valuation – a ploughland may be matched by a plough but it ...”

“... proceed upon a uniformity principle for which it was unable to find a foundation. The conclusion may simply be: reason does not determine us. And here ‘reason’ means, I think, a faculty of conscious deductive reasoning, or – perhaps more precisely and less restrictedly – a faculty of understanding, grasping, interpreting and calculating. Hume is ...”

“... will come as no surprise to find that Elton now has Neale and Pollard in his sights, though there may be some surprise in the discovery of Pollard’s belief that ‘the failure of parliamentary institutions in Semitic or negroid communities is proof, not of the defects of parliaments, but of the political incapacity of those who cannot work ...”

“... intelligence its due. It doesn’t often get it ... A classics graduate and an ex-Indian policeman may retire, baffled, from a shower of technical bullshit, but sooner or later ... ’ Raymond Williams also offers a quick, two-sided sketch of a new sort of British security officer in 1984. (His story begins in 1936.) Gwyn Lewis, under security scrutiny, is ...”

“... we were more like Sweden, only 20 per cent more like the United States. Nevertheless, Mrs Thatcher may not call an election until late 1987 or early 1988, and even then, whereas the Conservatives only have to have 35 per cent of the total vote to be sure of being called by the Queen, and Labour 36, the Alliance has to have 41. The two old parties, even ...”

“... now so thin on the ground that this time-warped offering by Henry Miller (written in the Thirties) may be the only significant one to show up. Such a desertion becomes the more strange when one remembers that up until quite recently one didn’t have to be a Leavisite to believe that Lawrence was perhaps the major English voice of this century. A partial ...”

“... as well as being ultimately pointless. The monetarist sees himself as a moralist, whatever bishops may think. All this led Friedman to conclude that variations in output, employment and (crucially) prices will be minimised by the adoption of a firm ‘monetary rule’. This involves a clear and irrevocable government commitment to expand the money supply at a ...”

“... about obscenity as it has developed over the years has focused on a rather special case, which may be seen as a distinct or third form of harm. This is where the harm doesn’t stop at the person himself, but involves others, just because it consists in a tendency, either new or moulded out of existing traits, to harm others. An example would be where ...”

“... This book needs to be handled with care. It may be other than it seems. Possibly the publishers were uncertain about what they had got; so am I. The author is well-known: ‘Colin Turnbull is Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington DC. He has lived and worked in India and central and eastern Africa ...”

“... the mole-hunting variety, have been distorting it into a morality tale of the Cold War. Scholars may talk as they please, constructing complex patterns of interpretation for a minority audience: the popular ground has been won by the Chapman Pincher school of history, with its attendant band of novelists, journalists and politicians. The message they bear is ...”

“... like Harvey and perhaps his author, that a very old story encapsulates a permanent truth, you may assume great freedom in reworking it in order to accommodate that truth to people who fail to perceive its immediate relevance. Making up stories in order to update or explain older stories, to make sense of them under altered conditions, is a highly ...”

“... Scargill to be at the head of the vanguard, at the very tip of the spearhead of revolution. It may not be exactly that, but it is surely something very like it. How else explain, for example, the one great loophole in Scargill’s defences, which has justified more than a quarter of the miners in their decision to go on working, and which ...”

“... and childhoods free from trauma? In any case, the right medical analogy for depression may not be asbestosis but rather diabetes, and the appropriate treatment something like maintenance medication on insulin. Though Sedgwick does not go as far as his fellow Marxist, Sebastiano Timpinaro, in holding that the best prophylaxis against mental illness ...”

“... does not automatically, as many have expected, wipe out old feuds and prejudices: new mass media may harden them instead. He details the growth of the road network, enabling the farmer to bring his produce to the market and to move about and meet others, and the spread of literacy and publishing: all this has been amplifying public excitements, ‘changing ...”