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“... on tomb sculpture, ‘the static intermediary between the earthly and the eternal’, where the stone figure of the Commendatore is undeniably a case in point. Peter Gay explores the opera’s ‘hidden agenda’, long ago exposed to the light of Freudian day: in this Oedipal reading, Mozart’s ‘unconscious rage against his father, disciplinarian and ...”

“... culture it is pregnant with easy excitement, and Hill conjures with it as with the philosopher’s stone, thus gilding his cloudily ambitious claims. But discussion of the intellectual influence of 1640-60 depends on the character that is assigned to the period. Despite the frequent use of the word ‘revolution’ by Hill and some others, it is actually a ...”

“... from all quarters to see the low-rise city from an impossible angle. In place of the 25,500 stone blocks of Kim’s tower – one for every day of the first seventy years of his life – the Shard is encased in 11,000 high-tech low-iron glass panels: if we’re into decoding buildings, could this be one for each of the 11,000 military personnel at the ...”

“... to the casual eye like just another part of Trafalgar Square, all Corinthian columns and Portland stone. ABK never recovered, and neither did the sort of modern architecture – committed to social change and uncompromising design – that the Ahrends family devoted their lives to. This intriguing, rather unprofessional account will be easily lost among the ...”

“... of St Mary, which stands in the centre of the village opposite the green. Small and built of local stone, its oddness dawns only slowly. The use of the Lombardic style – which Pevsner noted as ‘original’ for the early 1840s – may not strike the non-specialist as particularly remarkable, but a large ...”

“... and brothers’. Most were written by established names, among them Frank Conroy, Stuart Dybeck, Richard Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Stone and Amy Tan. Those writers known partly for formal experimentation whose work Wolff did include (among them Lorrie Moore, Denis Johnson and Mary Robison) did not, in the stories ...”

“... it, you might find that the work of these painters has, if not rigour, its own sort of integrity. Richard Morphet’s catalogue essay speaks with a fine generosity about the slow, steady, affirmative qualities of their later painting. This sort of pleading won’t settle the issue, however. The exhibition in question was just too big: ‘pleasure’, whatever ...”

“... private palazzi were built – ‘palatial’ by virtue of their size and of their grandiose stone façades. Palazzo Strozzi is a spectacular surviving example. There was no practical need for houses built on this scale, enclosing vast private spaces, underfurnished by later standards, in which the owner’s immediate family, together with a handful of ...”

“... to know why the inhabitants of a dying town could only discuss their problems in a cloud of smoke. Richard Klein, Professor of French at Cornell, could supply Mrs Willis with a number of answers, one of them being that, in wartime, smoking keeps up ‘courage and endurance in the face of intolerably stressful circumstances’, not only because of its ...”

“... situation of 1930s Germany, with the architect modelling the relationship of ‘Hans Pfitzner or Richard Strauss, or Furtwängler, or Paul Hindemith to a patron resembling Goebbels’. He suggests that Prince’s early poetic experiments were ‘influenced by the styles of political, economic and literary criticism as these were presented – or, as some ...”

“... John Lennon gave his famous interview to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine at the end of 1970, a few days before the release of the most important solo-Beatle record, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. Rolling Stone published the interview early the following year, with the album already in the shops ...”

“... those who have. He that is sure he is free from sin, Prieberg seems to say, let him cast the first stone. Plenty of stones have been cast in the direction of the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler. The attacks began in 1933, soon after Hitler took power, and continued until well after Furtwängler’s death in 1954. As late as 1983, the New York Times ...”

“... stones which he must tear away to make a hole big enough to crawl through. There is a Greta Garbo stone (he once pelted her with ripe figs), and stones called Gary Cooper, Freddie March and Sylvia Sidney, but one of the biggest and loosest goes by the name of Clara Bow. Vulgar, gum-chewing, and with a comically nasal Brooklyn accent, the It Girl flashed ...”

“... that relationships frequently traversed ethnic or linguistic divides. At Turnastone, a man called Richard Gogh was said to be consorting with various women: Helen, daughter of Trahaearn, and Lleucu, daughter of Einion, and Lleucu Kedy – all probably Welsh – but also with the more English-sounding Margaret Hunt. Another woman in the village, accused of ...”

“... and limitations of the new biology. The book has its scientific antecedents, most specifically Richard Lewontin’s The Doctrine of DNA and Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life; yet it stands alone in trying to reach to the very essence of biology, with its ‘knowable pasts and unknowable futures’, in the best tradition of Italy’s two scientific ...”