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“... tricks of scale, luminosity and outline to make his sitters loom large within their frames. He took his cue from the Dutch followers of Caravaggio – the so-called Utrecht Caravaggisti, such as Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen – who lent presence to their figures through dramatic use of light and shade. The turbaned man’s features are ...”

“... an apparatchik to get on without them. These were rituals in which everyone, without exception, took part. Vaksberg, though a Gorbachev admirer, retells a story which went the rounds of Moscow at the beginning of 1989, to the effect that an edition of the popular investigative programme Vzglad had been banned because it showed an interview with Galina ...”

“... the powerful surge of water. For an instant the thought crossed her mind to run wherever her feet took her, away from the man who was waiting for her in the green cave [of the haystack], but she knew she wouldn’t.’ And so, a virgin from a virgin land, she gives herself to the Muscovite, whose child she bears. One can see what’s meant here – technology ...”

“... to dictatorial means to carry through its will: these, under Stalin, became routinised and took precedence over, then finally snuffed out, most of the vestiges of political life. By the end of the Terror, McAuley argues, the dominance of the Party had been replaced by that of the NKVD – and ‘the dislocation created by the system of terror was so ...”

“... of winter’; I could have lived happily in a world of perpetual cold. So when I began reading John Evelyn’s diary entries for January and February 1684, I should have been delighted. Instead, I felt an odd revulsion: 9 January: I went across the Thames on the ice, now become so thick as to bear not only streets of booths, in which they roasted ...”

“... to day activities of his political career. Every now and then, Disraeli opened this storehouse, took out a handful of ideas and tested them as creatures of fiction or as deft phrases for a speech. After carefully perfecting and polishing them, Disraeli put the ideas back in the cupboard for another day. This authorises a blanket dismissal of the ...”

“... play with his thoughts and personality. Dorothy began to keep a journal at Racedown, but she took it up again at Dove Cottage after William and his brother John had gone off on a visit, leaving her alone a few days. ‘I resolved to write a journal of the time till W and J return and I set about keeping my ...”

“... In the London Review of Books, John Maynard Smith said about scientists: ‘however interested they may be in politics or history or philosophy, their first love is science itself.’ If only I could follow this bent, and tell something of Hamilton as a mathematician. As it happens, he also wrote a good deal of poetry, but his poems lack the magic of his equations, which seem more beautiful and moving now than when they were imagined 150 years ago ...”

“... because the tensions and problems are simply too great for anyone. This is in part the theme of John Morrison’s efficient and often thoughtful biography, which sets out to show that, contrary to the view held (at least until recently) by many observers and politicians in the West, Yeltsin is ‘squarely in the democrats’ camp’. He reminds us that, as ...”

“... Brought before Pharaoh’s Daughter’ (1736) ‘Hannah Osborne, Daughter of John Ranby’ (c.1747-50) detail of ‘Captain Thomas Coram’ (1740)PreviousNext In a thoughtful essay Lamb himself attacked the notion that what is most Hogarthian about Hogarth is what is most broadly comic, most boisterous, most fun. This, he claims, is ...”

“... in reverse, Though we were still. Like cigarettes and cokes This was their slight excitement, took up slack In time that wound by, idle. Nothing worse And nothing better. To me it seemed so short,           I wanted more, I wanted hours, I wanted to be caught In that dense undergrowth by that wet shore. This was an exit from our boring life, A ...”

“... inclinations and on terms of near-equality. Though she had the reputation of loving society, she took a high view of the duties and destiny of a wife. In 1814, at the age of 19, she chose. ‘I assure you,’ she told a cousin, ‘that my heart and my judgment are equally satisfied with the man of my choice.’ The chosen one was ...”

“... with a ‘certification’: this short, thin, black tie had a provenance. It had been worn by John Lennon at a London concert in the 1960s. The letter of ‘certification’, signed by the impresario concerned and by Lennon himself, confirmed the association between tie and wearer. I also have a record of a cheque I wrote on 27 January 1982. This is for ...”

“... unaccountable power of banks and other sinister financial interests. Half a century or so after John F. Kennedy’s assassination, around 60 per cent of Americans still dissent from the official verdict that a lone gunman was responsible, though there’s no consensus about the identity of the conspirators: variously the Mafia, the CIA or Castro’s ...”

“... be comic; there’s certainly no shortage of good material. Black’s almost manic social climbing took the peculiar form of wanting to meet famous people, hang out with them, and fill them in at great length on history and current affairs. He had an excellent memory, and was not afraid to use it. Lists of Swedish kings, Spanish ships in the Armada, minor ...”