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“... one of the daughters by a previous marriage, became a famous water-diviner. When the treacherous Robert produced Goodbye to all that, the long-suffering father, who had supported and encouraged the son for many years and received in return nothing but patronage and contempt, riposted at the age of 84 with his own autobiography, To return to all ...”

“... in London and Oxbridge mostly, is supposed to be deeply satisfying to the English themselves. Robert Crawford, who pursues the argument on behalf of the Scots, avoids this mistake, detecting in a provincial Englishman like Tony Harrison a fury and resentment not surpassed by any Scot. But this is hardly a novel perception, for Harrison has achieved fame ...”

“... me of something I’d never heard – a commercial traveller’s overtures. There is nothing in Robert Craft’s skilful, conscientious, copiously annotated selection to get me over the shock I then received: on the contrary, there’s plenty to revive it. Boring as many of the composer’s letters are (which, then, have remained unselected?), about one ...”

“... style would for once be wholly appropriate? Why academic presses rather than HarperCollins? This may be mere circumstance. Perhaps film rights are even now being auctioned. But I suspect not. Corbin’s work is not packaged for bookclubs or bestseller lists. He does not present picaresque narratives, inspiring characters or improving parables, but rather ...”

“... bushes of fine dust smoking on the skyline, and watchPlanes high in blue, dry air, then hear devil-may-care shouts, whistled dance tunes,Metallic clangs, bangs, long, long seconds of machine-gun sputter.Quit now of HQ’s bullshit,As tank commander my rank means my place is rightOf the dark-muzzled six-pounder, peering through the stark periscope:Very small ...”

“... Timur der Eroberer und die islamische Welt des späten Mittelalters (1993). Those who read French may also consult Jean Aubin’s brilliant and wide-ranging essay ‘Comment Tamerlan prenait les villes’ (published in Studia Islamica in 1963); Aubin was especially interested in Tamerlane’s residual shamanism and his reputation for sorcery. Despotism and ...”

“... that they had not been ripped open like pigs.’ The reappearance of the porky metaphor may indicate a family habit of speech, since Edwin Tennyson d’Eyncourt wrote of his cousin: ‘What a hog that Alfred is, and what can you expect from a pig but a grunt.’ Tennyson was 12 when he wrote the first letter in this volume, which closes with his ...”

“... made Holman Hunt paint The Awakening Conscience, for the Queen’s face has a pensive look that may be remorse, and in the background is a second figure – seated, male, and so diminished that the viewer might easily overlook him – probably intended as Lancelot. But what is startling about the painting is that none of this literary baggage is of much ...”

“... and worries about struggles in his most private self that no one else will understand. This may seem at odds with the man who writes of his hunger for any sort of publicity, but throughout MacDiarmid’s career private anxieties and public pugnacity appear to have fuelled one another. The talented but vulnerable private individual could comfortably ...”

“... back against the occupation or pressing for membership of international organisations – they may withhold the revenue, starving the PA of funds and making it difficult to provide even minimal public services. Universities on the West Bank can usually employ visiting academics from outside Palestine for only one month before a permit is required; the ...”

“... cakes (and not above stealing and swindling to buy them), not academically gifted. Baker thinks he may have been dyslexic, and he was certainly an abnormally bad speller all his life; but he read voraciously, mostly adventure stories, and seems to have enjoyed a rich fantasy life. An unhappy school career, punctuated by expulsion from Dulwich College, ended ...”

“... criteria) as well as an upbringing on a farm where he killed and observed nature close-up may have contributed to this breakthrough; but it was possible only because of his astonishingly pliant play with language. ‘Pigs’ contains the lines ‘Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp./We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush./Us all fuckers ...”

“... was ‘an amateur artist who, on vacations, used to paint funny faces on tennis balls’. Marvin may have suggested the packet colour: pink. It was instantly popular: ‘Packets were swiped from restaurants and stolen from hospitals,’ Cohen says. A&P, the supermarket chain, came calling, and pretty soon every diner in America offered Sweet’N Low ...”

“... lately because his recent memoirs, Winter Journal (2012) and Report from the Interior (2013), may startle fans of his writing with their formlessness and clutter, ham-handed lyricism and epic egotism. My fear, picking up 4321, was that it had been written by the imprudent, tone-deaf Auster of those two books, rather than by the one I reluctantly, thornily ...”

“... from the beginning or end of the play. Rather than a collection of complete dramas, the papyrus may contain a selection of greatest hits.Both passages are unmistakably by Euripides. They share his love of aphorisms, his obsession with the overreach of the powerful and the dangers of cleverness. In one passage, Polyidus rebuffs Minos’ demands: ‘So ...”