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“... this valley! On every side there are unassailable mountains and reddish promontories, high with green ivy and crowned with clumps of plane trees.’ He marvels at the purity of the mountain air, and the welcome sense of withdrawing from the world and being born anew. But like Dr Johnson, Lermontov’s narrator seems as much alarmed as delighted by the ...”

“... box’ and ‘lead pencil’ are pretty straightforward ways of describing what a nice St-Julien or Pauillac tastes like. Some people who seem to know what they’re talking about say that Rieslings are ‘petrolly’; others prefer ‘plasticine’ for what they agree to be – but which may not be – ‘the same’ smell. ‘Lanolin’ is a ...”

“... principled heroes of 19th-century fiction who end up on the wrong side of the law: Jean Valjean, Julien Sorel, Raskolnikov, Nekhludov in Resurrection, who joins the woman he has wronged – the prostitute Maslova – in the convict gang travelling to Siberia. No reflection, however, precedes the decision that leads Felix unintentionally to take a man’s ...”

“... Politicide) on the historically unique character of the polis (the other two have to make do with Julien Benda and Monty Python). Here, it could be thought, democracy would at last acquire its place, hitherto all but entirely absent, in the problematic of The Passage to Europe. What part does van Middelaar accord it? Since the Greek public was at once ...”