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“... content in poetry is not for the reader a literary matter, and that style should slip the content straight down the reader’s throat, for content is what matters most. This may beg a lot more questions, but except to critics it is clear enough. When W.H. Davies says he saw the wind dragging the corn by her golden hair into a dark wood, the startling and ...”

“... more spectacular instances of 19th-century Sapphic impersonation. First is the strange case of ‘Michael Field’: a pair of homosexual female lovers, aunt and niece, whose jointly-authored, Sapphically-inspired verses in Long Ago (1889) set the stage for later lesbian appropriations of the poet. Second up is Swinburne, whose outrageously sado-masochistic ...”

“... It can intervene in decisions that involve the awarding of a goal or a penalty, the issuing of a straight red card, or a case of mistaken identity. The IFAB guidelines state that VAR ‘may assist the referee only in the event of a “clear and obvious error” or “serious missed incident”’ and that it must not be seen to ‘re-referee’ the game. The ...”

“... was encountered in the flesh, was a place, a landscape, a father, a teacher. De Quincey did not go straight to the Lake District, it is true, but it was only a question of when. His metropolitan escapades, which came to form a central part of the Confessions, were, in every way, a prelude. Like Freud circling Rome before deciding he could at last enter the ...”

“... at the time the multi-millionaire Zweig was residing in Portland Place), and then it’s straight back to discussion of the revolution.Further west, in Princeton, or much further, in Pacific Palisades, Thomas Mann and his family spent diverting evenings – this in 1939 – debating which of Zweig, Ludwig, Feuchtwanger and Remarque was the worst ...”

“... the telling, through the style. The medium is a markedly individual one that moves easily from straight, even plodding, narrative to bold transitions, ellipses, assimilations. As one reads this novel, the lurking question must be: what do these miscellaneous experiences, these townscapes, these conversations, these sexual involvements add up to? What do ...”

“... supermarket stick-up. It flirts with another threadbare cliché (‘the gang that couldn’t shoot straight’) in the inept band of villains who make up the dramatis personae. In the forefront is Stanley Sinkiewicz, a 71-year-old retiree from Ford’s Baton Rouge assembly plant who is living out his last years in Riviera Beach, Florida. Stanley is the last of ...”

“... he swaggers a little and swings the left arm, he has the slightest inclination to stoop, but is straight, smart, active and gentlemanly-looking; his age is about 30 years.’ Such was the picture of the young Michael Davitt, Fenian suspect, produced by the police detective who was watching him in 1869. (In fact, he was ...”

“... middle-aged rock music critic), issued an interesting warning. Talking about the popularity of straight, commercial pop music (‘Sugar, Sugar, Honey, Honey’), and the often dire pretensions of progressive, underground music (‘You’re two Thousand Light Years from Home’), he noticed that the mumsy commercial stuff ‘is crap, but the people are ...”

“... idea of a modern politician turning down such a soundbite opportunity makes one sigh. Similarly, Michael Jago reproduces part of an interview with Honor Balfour in 1967: Balfour: What was the greatest achievement of the Labour government? Attlee: Indian independence. Balfour: What was the greatest problem you faced? Attlee: Russia. Balfour: What was the ...”

“... Mitt Romney has now joined Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale in the political void that awaits any rejected American presidential nominee who doesn’t care to linger into senatorial senescence. Dole appeared in adverts for Viagra. Dukakis has been a public transport activist. Mondale, in 2002, at the age of 74, ran an 11-day campaign for his old Minnesota Senate seat after Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash ...”

“... thousand words. At that rate, the 290,000 words of ‘beautifully crafted descriptions’ – as Michael Wood put it in his review in the LRB of 3 January – that make up Eça de Queirós’s ‘masterly’ The Maias would have cost Dedalus £23,000 to translate. If it paid for it itself, of course: grants are available to English-language publishers from ...”

“... putting the finishing touches to a government reshuffle that would see him shunt his old friend Michael Gove from the Department of Education to a new role as chief whip. In effect he was clearing the decks for the following year’s election and he needed one of his most contentious and least popular ministers to be less visible. Still, he discussed it ...”

“... give his own opinions on poetry and Russian history until he was abruptly cut off. Stalin wanted a straight answer to a straight question, and Pasternak never forgave himself for failing to give it. A more adroit and in a sense a more unscrupulous man would have at once answered, ‘Yes, he is very important indeed,’ and ...”

“... In my dealings with him, however, I never found him the ‘semi-housetrained polecat’ that Michael Foot once called him. Back in 1980-81, when he was a junior minister at the Department of Industry and I was covering the mysteries of the Common Market for the Financial Times, I found him an agreeable character with a wry and self-deprecating sense of ...”