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“... recording of ‘God Save the King’ and other patriotic anthems. ‘Not surprisingly’, Richard Weight remarks in Patriots, the convoy ‘got a muted reception when it parked in the ruins of Berlin’. In France, the bus crews were treated to mayoral banquets, only for their leader to complain about the ‘strange dishes’ which weren’t ‘up to ...”

“... vigour and escaped with impunity. Then there was Conchita, who employed the author as an English teacher. ‘She did not turn me into an expert on Spanish poetry. Rather, she learned about Spanish poetry for the first time when, in naked languor, she listened to my reading from the Oxford Book of Spanish Verse – Lorca, Gongora, St John of the ...”

“... shadow of the man-made. And though it’s the music, and the indie film industry, that draw the English tourist in the first place, these have little to do with the city I loved while I was growing up. Austin itself has changed since I left. The suburbs have expanded at a desperate pace – billboards advertising ‘ranch-style homes’ appear on every ...”

“... by genre created problems as well as solving them. Their strategy of grouping all the plays about English history, whether comic or tragic in structure, and placing them in chronological order by subject-matter, all neatly titled after the name of the appropriate reigning monarch, made Shakespeare’s contributions to the development of the chronicle play ...”

“... A new publication by Norman Gash is cause for excitement. His stature among living 19th-century English historians is rivalled only by that of Eric Hobsbawm, and since the two men’s writings have little in common except an elegantly plain and direct prose, Clio herself would find it difficult to award the palm to one or the other ...”

“... from Lyubimov’s wish to know, while he was directing Pas-ternak’s translation of Hamlet, if an English translation of the text was available. The answer is that there is and there isn’t. Shakespeare’s text won’t disclose what Pasternak did to it in the course of translation. Versatile, even promiscuous, the capacious new-style matrioshka can also ...”

“... The Feminist Companion to Literature in English is itself the product of impressive feminist companionship. Listed in the preamble are three editors, four consulting editors, 12 contributing editors, and 54 ‘contributors’ – all women, all university teachers. Academic addresses range over three continents (Asia and Africa are missing, although women writers from those corners of the world are generously represented ...”

“... dominant image. For him, the present rot can be traced directly to the 1960s: specifically to Richard Neville’s Play Power, with its demonic slogan ‘the weapons of revolution are obscenity, blasphemy and drugs.’ Holbrook still sees that era – which began with the 1960 Lady Chatterley acquittal and ended with the Gay News prosecution in 1976 – as ...”

“... Revolution. On the one hand, the American colonists (who were themselves a medley of Scots, Irish, English, Welsh and Germans) might never have won had they not secured aid and auxiliaries from the French, Spanish and Dutch empires. Conversely, British troops (who were also a medley of Scots, Irish, English, Welsh and ...”

“... imaginations as soon as translations first appeared – in French between 1704 and 1717, and in English from 1708. Oriental fever swept through salons and coffee-houses, the offices of broadsheet publishers and theatrical impresarios; the book fired a train of imitations, spoofs, turqueries, Oriental tales, extravaganzas. It changed tastes in dress and ...”

“... restore. I cannot help liking better than buggery the ‘Switch-Hitter’ which Peter gave to the English language (no remote controls in Castleknock in his day). Peter’s vanity was consistent with his more golden qualities. Brian Sewell’s suggestion that Kirsten should have minded about his marriage with Susan is entirely disproved by the reality of ...”

“... monumental revolution is not much to Marcus’s taste either. We hear little or nothing about the English Revolution, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, nothing about the Soviet or the Chinese Revolutions. These are all out of court because Marcus is after something at once more catastrophic and more insignificant: the Sex Pistols, Dada, the ...”

“... they still represented 12 per cent of all American movies. But if the year that brought Richard Nixon’s triumphant re-election was the last in which the number of Western releases would reach double figures, the residual significance of the West as the bedrock of American identity was eloquently reiterated, just before the collapse of Soviet ...”

“... Beechcombings is a very different book from Woodlands, and rather suffers from the comparison. Richard Mabey’s intention is to use a series of ‘discursive essays’ to build up ‘a brief history of the narratives we’ve constructed about trees over the past thousand years to make them accessible, useful, comprehensible and obedient’, and to use the ...”

“... that his verses were not much good. Latin verse composition was a mental reflex for most educated English men, and for a significant number of women too, in the period from 1500 to 1800. In the later part of that period it was exercise for the mind, a test of its vigour, and an index of civility. In the early 16th century, though, Neo-Latin verse was much ...”