“... repertoire, to compose orchestral pieces, to write scores for ballets or settings for Dylan Thomas poems, however, is well beyond the competence of other stars in the firmament, even Paul McCartney. There have been various, normally embarrassing attempts by rock groups, or ex-members of rock groups going solo, to explore musical ‘concepts’ and ...”

“... addled Mary as the wellhead of wealth scarcely to be imagined is part of legend. To the admirable Thomas Cubitt goes the major credit for replacing Mary’s Thameside swamps with the patrician squares and terraces of Belgravia. Meanwhile John Nash, no foe to the rich, was erecting the haughty villas of Regent’s Park and designing a far finer Regent Street ...”

“... on, and attribution of responsibility is still hotly contested. The conclusion, which becomes more troubling the more you think about it, is that nobody entirely understands the Flash Crash. The Flash Crash was the first moment in the spotlight for high-frequency trading. This new type of market activity had grown to ...”

“... labelling it the ‘most fatal’ of habits and Kant denouncing it as a moral madness more destructive than suicide. By the early 19th century, masturbation had become the ‘moloch of the species’, as J.H. Kellogg, the American health reformer and cereal king, described it in the typically apocalyptic rhetoric of anti-onanists. Female ...”

“... Only a year ago, American evangelical Christians seemed more powerful than they had ever been. They had helped to re-elect George W. Bush in 2004, in spite of a rickety economy and the disastrous invasion of Iraq. They had waged a successful campaign in Washington to restrict access to late-term abortion. They had launched a series of ballot initiatives intended to prevent states or judges legalising gay marriage ...”

“... by M.H. Abrams and others, had held that ‘the medieval period in English literature extends for more than 800 years’ and included Old English as well as Middle English poetry. By the late 1990s, the Norton Anthology had seen off the rival Oxford Anthology, produced by heavyweight academics including Frank Kermode and Harold Bloom, and the deep histories ...”

“... in our house when I was a teenager and they both offered glimpses of the world outside that were more intense, more useful, than anything on television or on albums or in ordinary books. One was The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse, edited by Kenneth Allott. It had been published first in 1950, with a second edition in ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”