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“... and galleries; or the Empire gets reimagined as an indulgence merely of the English. Yet, as Michael Fry argues in this vast, contentious volume, alongside the Reformation, the Treaty of Union and the Enlightenment, Empire was ‘one of the great formative experiences’ in Scotland’s past. The Scottish Empire is a remarkable book that could ...”

“... paedophile, martyr, traitor, major minor writer. In an Omnibus programme broadcast late last year, Michael Bracewell claimed that he was ‘the century’s first pop celebrity’, and tried to persuade us that, in the manner of an Elvis or a McCartney, Wilde was a working-class lad made good. Cut to a shot of Bracewell looking uncomfortable in a gargoyled ...”

“... ingenuity. If Riffaterre holds out for the virtues of a disciplined, methodical criticism, Paul Fry has arguments in plenty for doubting that method can ever be more than a delusive dream. His book is a sustained and elegant meditation on the limits of formalist theory, the ways in which reading confounds or eludes the rules laid down by ...”

“... his crew had found themselves in Paris in May 1968 in the thick of the événements. His producer, Michael Gill, recalls ‘riot police … just off-camera’, adding, laconically: ‘I was gassed.’ Despite being so apparently out of sympathy with the temper of ‘these days’, Civilisation was hugely popular. Now, when even more of what Clark stood for ...”

“... seem a little more conventional than it otherwise might. Alan Rickman is the Caterpillar, Stephen Fry is the Cheshire Cat, Timothy Spall is a bloodhound who seems to have dropped in from another movie. The fun of the thing becomes a little stronger than the threat of the thing, and there is a rather dogged narrative logic to the whole structure that takes us ...”

“... which was published with blurbs from Elton John, Noam Chomsky, Piers Morgan and Stephen Fry, not exactly a ready-made support group. It has a chapter on Anslinger and Holiday. Hari suggests that the kind of argument I have quoted from the file was an aside – though it sounds to me rather more like an official line that no one bothered to ...”

“... of the other stuff in supermarkets should just be binned. A recent, very austere contribution by Michael Pollan, In Defence of Food (Allen Lane, £16.99) argues that one should only eat things that have been nourished by sunlight. But what are creatures that are allergic to sunlight supposed to do? I don’t mean moles, who will occasionally make their way ...”

“... to place it in the National Gallery. In the following year he consoled himself with Piero’s St Michael, which entered the Gallery after his death. On returning from his Italian travels in 1858, Eastlake would have found his friend Austin Henry Layard working on the proofs of a long article on fresco painting which appeared that October in the Quarterly ...”

“... it is. But not in the same way that the screenplay for John Huston’s The Bible is by Christopher Fry, or for Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ by Paul Schrader. Pasolini hasn’t really written this movie, he has made excerpts from the gospel and filmed them, either as images in the manner we have just looked at, or with images, in the style ...”

“... Angel Lady’, who writes a number of columns in the mystical press, teaches at Colin Fry’s International College of Spiritual Science and Healing in Ramsbergsgarden, Sweden, runs www.angellady.co.uk, and has now written a book, An Angel Treasury: A Celestial Collection of Inspirations, Encounters and Heavenly Lore (Element, £12.99).* Colin ...”

“... Vorticism, the movement he set up with Pound and others around 1913 after a break with Roger Fry, would probably have had a short life even if the war had not intervened. Lewis was not a team player; looking back he said: ‘Vorticism, in fact, was what I, personally, did, and said, at a certain period.’ Other surviving Vorticists were, with ...”

“... collected and had been demoted to the cellars of many public galleries. The art criticism of Roger Fry and Clive Bell was no longer considered significant, and few people knew the name of Carrington. The best-known of the Bloomsburgians was probably Maynard Keynes – the man Bloomsbury had sent into the political world to represent their interests during the ...”

“... had been in relative decline for over a century, is something that has puzzled numerous observers. Michael Thompson raised the question among economic historians nearly twenty years ago, and whole generations of political historians have offered alternative solutions. It is something which occurs, different in detail but similar in outline, in many other ...”

“... moves’, a problem for shortlisted novelists leading sedentary lives, but not for the impressive Michael Collins – author of The Keepers of Truth and a keen runner. As well as completing his novel, Collins has managed to finish a marathon. A jog through the streets of London dressed up in rhino costume wasn’t quite challenging enough for him, however: he ...”

“... these geese become swans in Pincher’s skilled hands. How unfair to suggest that they were small fry, dilettanti, wartime temporary agents or upper-class decadents. Blunt, in particular, he praises as an agent of a supreme professionalism and commitment, with Driberg, an alleged treble agent, winning a proxime accessit for stamina and for knowledge of human ...”