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“... of the Walrus talking about why the sea is boiling hot or whether pigs have wings, though, since Martin is a University Lecturer in French, a better parallel might be Bouvard and Pécuchet, Flaubert’s satire on the indiscriminate accumulation of half-digested knowledge. The blurb endorses such comment: ‘Graham ...”

“... to his reality-level, his responsiveness to the accidental humour and freakish poetry of life. Thomas Pynchon uses names like Oedipa Maas and Pig Bodine (where the effect is slangy, jivey, cartoonish); at the other end of the scale, John Braine offers us Tom Metfield, Jack Royston, Jane Framsby (can these people really exist, in our minds or anywhere ...”

“... and humiliating subordination to an ascendant Islamic power to avoid enslavement or death. Martin Gilbert praises Eurabia as ‘a warning to Europe not to allow the anti-American and anti-Israel pressures of Islam to subvert Europe’s true values: vibrant democracy, humanitarian free thinking and social fair dealing’. Tell that to the Muslim ...”

“... script based on the one Douglas Adams was working on when he died in 2001; it stars an Englishman (Martin Freeman, perhaps still better known as Tim from The Office) as the picaresque hero, Arthur Dent; and it has the same theme tune. I say ‘it’s said’ because I haven’t managed to see the movie yet: I intelligently arranged to go to a screening three ...”

“... chocolate), help may still be at hand in the form of literary prizes. The Booker, which despite Martin Amis’s best protests still considers itself ‘Britain’s most prestigious literary accolade’ (whatever that means), won’t be bestowed until 17 October, and the shortlist isn’t due till mid-September, but the hype began to trundle back in ...”

“... both famous and infamous, and famous not for a few minutes but for ever. Three centuries later, Thomas Carlyle will write that but for you there would have been no French Revolution, no America. This is what happened not in a dream but metaphorically to Martin Luther, a hitherto obscure monk and professor of theology in ...”

“... butterflies most obviously. They’ve appeared in his writing before, notably in a line from Thomas Mann that serves as an epigraph to ‘The Architect’: ‘There is only one problem in the world: How does one break through the chrysalis and become a butterfly?’ The line glosses the story’s subject matter – Emil’s musical metamorphosis from ...”

“... oblige her, Ibsen grudgingly wrote the bowdlerised ending himself. Recently, the German director Thomas Ostermeier toured Europe and the US with his own new ending, in which Nora takes out a gun and gleefully empties it into the body of her husband. Such pranks notwithstanding, it is on the stage, in the hands of directors and actors, that we can see most ...”

“... in downtown Montgomery. Stand in the pulpit at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church where Dr Martin Luther King Jr preached.’ My wife and I did stand in the pulpit where Dr King preached, and sat in the church office where he and his colleagues planned the bus boycott, and, at the insistence of our guide, had our pictures taken behind the lectern from ...”

“... in his letter about Freud in this issue of the LRB, and by John Lanchester in his piece about Martin Amis. The note about Bartlett (who is identified as the ‘author’ of the book and owns the copyright) seems intended merely to spread a murky film over the question of whether or not this is really the work of Eva Braun. Bartlett claims that the Diary ...”

“... of Housemaid’s Knee or Tennis Elbow. Bookmate has been developed by an inventor called Martin Boronte, who has ‘never seen anyone look comfortable holding open a paperback book’. The device, which can double-up as a bookmark, is a butterfly-shaped piece of clear plastic which is easily attached to the reader’s thumb by means of a rubber ...”

“... the most important impact over the years on how we think and talk about law.’ Next to Clarence Thomas, Scalia is the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court. Kagan is a Democrat and, we’re told, a liberal. Was she including herself in this claim? If so, how exactly has Scalia influenced her? If not, what does she think of his influence on ...”

“... anti-talent for it (the Oscars, the primaries, the hearings, the trials, Shirley Temple, Clarence Thomas, Andrea Dworkin, Al Sharpton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Swaggart). Whereas, over here, maleness itself has become an embarrassment. Male consciousness, male pride, male rage – we don’t want to hear about it. This of course is the very diffidence and ...”

“... of Being. Finally, there are appreciations of friends, such as Bloch, Benjamin, Kracauer and Thomas Mann – appreciations often laced with criticism, which in the case of the ‘curious realist’ Kracauer proved so troubling that their friendship did not survive it. Throughout, Adorno’s adherence to the model of a non-totalised force-field operates ...”

“... whether Jews could licitly demand interest from non-Jews remained a point of theological debate. Thomas Aquinas, one of the most influential medieval opponents of usury, described it as an unlawful attempt to charge someone for the use of time itself. For later defenders of interest this was what made it so useful: it was an enticement to get someone to part ...”