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“... bridge the train is crossing has always been assumed to be the railway bridge at Maidenhead. Lady Simon said she had been in the same compartment as Turner on a Great Western train from Exeter to London, and he told her that Rain, Steam and Speed was realised after he put his head out of the window of a train as it passed over the Thames at Maidenhead. As the ...”

“... if that is what she is telling, seems to have been that her inclinations were simply not very strong. Such a deficiency, if deficiency it is, brought with it at least one unarguable benefit. She was without jealousy. Duff spent his whole married life running after, and usually catching up with, every presentable female in the area. Diana either turned a ...”

“... are rather sketchily integrated into the whole. On the post-1979 ‘establishment’ Jones is very strong indeed. The outriders are given their full significance in providing the ideas needed by the ruling class in the crisis of the 1970s, and in sustaining it ever since. From the mandarin Mont Pelerin Society to the would-be demotic ...”

“... bathes his feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and then anoints them with precious oils. Simon the Pharisee reproves Jesus for allowing her to touch him: ‘She is a sinner,’ he says. In response, Jesus absolves her: ‘Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much.’ These many sins have long been assumed to be sexual, and the jar ...”

“... Raine, who, one is reminded, does this kind of thing best. Raine also overshadows the work of Simon Rae, perhaps the least distinct of these poets in individual style: the actual machinery is efficient, but seems directed to no particular end. Wendy Cope makes fun of this and other fashionable modes in a series of ‘Strugnell’ poems – works of a ...”

“... certain optimism, even in a more cynical character. Cynicism is not one of Lord Redcliffe-Maud’s strong points: it is indeed one for which one could not give him more than a gamma marking, as compared with other members of his class, but this defect has perhaps made him more rather than less suitable for public display. For Lord Redcliffe-Maud ...”

“... manipulation of the Old, in this case Jesus’s appeal to the Creation stones to support his strong stand against divorce (Mark 10.6ff): ‘From the beginning of the creation God made them male and female [= Gen. 1.27]. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh ...”

“... is defined in reference to literature. However, as Lévy’s interview here with Claude Simon makes clear, in French cultural life today these are no longer competing, but simply different worlds: ‘the demise of the prophets’ after the Sixties also marks the end of a privileged connection between intellectuals and literature. This first became ...”

“... dead. The sequence takes the form of a series of meetings with ‘familiar ghosts’. There’s Simon Sweeney, ‘an old Sabbath-breaker’ who urges him to ‘Stay clear of all processions!’ Heaney is nonetheless drawn into the trail of pilgrims for the island. On the way he meets the shade of Carleton:‘We are earthworms of the earth, and all thathas ...”

“... and Oman remained British protectorates, their currencies pegged to sterling. Wearing makes a strong case that it was the cost of the military ‘protection’ of the Gulf that forced the end of Britain’s formal empire there in 1971, and the beginning of US hegemony. Before withdrawing from its dependencies, the British government placed retired ...”

“... certain types of complex system. Historical contingency, too, has a role in the new synthesis. Simon Conway Morris has argued that if the Earth hadn’t been hit by the meteorite that probably made the dinosaurs extinct, the history of life would have been quite different. One of the most important recent insights, however, is that the capacity for ...”

“... because the public were sick of the Tories, but because Whitehall and the City believed that a strong Labour Party was a better safeguard for Tory policies than a weak and divided Conservative Party. Having got their man, Whitehall and the City are now getting their policies, too. Under New Labour, Britain is becoming increasingly integrated into the ...”

“... practice. It is as if we had only the lyrics, without recordings or melodies, of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Joan Baez – and those only in indifferent Portuguese translations. Most of their power and all of their subtlety would vanish. For similar reasons, the troubadours have more often been honoured as cultural pioneers than admired as ...”

“... the rivery smile to Paradiso XXX: a whole Commedia is being got through in a couple of tercets, so strong is the rush of feeling. The peculiarity is in the next line with its poetico-hearty diction: ‘How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!’ Paterson has much more subtle ways of registering how language can seem to pull away from or do violence to ...”

“... all too clearly in need of reform, and the importance of the country being well led and militarily strong had been abundantly demonstrated. Cromwell’s achievements could therefore be praised and admired without any fear of his example being followed. Indeed, not only was Oliver not a threat to liberty, but he had, in the Whig view, been its safeguard. The ...”