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“... criticism in all its vertiginous variety lead one to ponder what it is all about and where it may be heading. The book by René Wellek, focused on Central and Eastern European critics, is the penultimate volume of a vast project he began in the Fifties. The two previous volumes dealt respectively with English and American criticism in this same ...”

“... to the search for spiritual truth, this religious background deserves more attention. Pound may have turned against Christianity, but for much of his life he was looking for – and even sought to be – a saviour. Moody learned to write biography as he went along. His third volume is better presented than its predecessors, which have too many ...”

“... only the delicate appetites of language specialists. However, for what has been set before us may the Lord make us truly thankful, for Hieatt and Butler’s work on these texts is beyond praise. The Forme of Cury, for instance, is popularly known from its 18th-century editions. But only the other day an expensive advertisement in a food magazine was put ...”

“... reckoned to help offset any loss to the planned balance of nuclear forces which the peace movement may cause. So far so good. The military can be applauded for reacting sensibly to political demands. But there are two problems. One is that we may end up with more conventional forces and more nuclear weapons. The other is ...”

“... as an inspiration; defensively denounced, but perhaps more important, was Dylan Thomas. Thomas may have looked like an ‘ugly puffy fatso’ when he visited Cambridge during Redgrove’s student days, but he ‘kept visionary poetry alive for me and kept me alive too’. Redgrove’s finest early collection of poems, The Force (1966), has a title surely ...”

“... Who can see the green earth any moreAs she was by the sources of Time?Who imagines her fields as they layIn the sunshine, unworn by the plough?Matthew Arnold, ‘The Future’Barley field, cut, dried,Brewed, poured, you’re so garrulousLong after you’ve gone.Old English riddle from the Exeter Book                    I                        1What rutting beast snorts‘Let me give you some pointers’Then trots through the mist?                        2In the beginningWas the Word, and the Word wasParsed into creatures ...”

“... been preserved. The argument hinged on the question of what limits there should be to what rulers may do to their people in the name of the national interest. The legalist faction argued that profits from the salt and iron duties were essential to the state’s survival against its external enemies. The Confucian faction replied that wise, benign rule and ...”

“... eventually, a Nazi obsession. In the Fifties, it returns as something brighter. The voice of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies grew out of a negotiation between European and American traditions, not least English and American traditions, with the balance of power tilting decisively towards America. Lowell, coming from an East Coast Wasp society, is ...”

“... of them will read it in fearful anticipation of what they will learn and of the loss of hope it may entail. The author has a special responsibility to such readers. Yet, as the book shows, it is difficult, even for those treating cancer, to be calm and objective about the disease. Cancers are common, and often, but not always fatal. The disease inspires ...”

“... a woman who travels to Norway with thirty sex-starved sailors and a man called Stevenson – who may be based on Borges, who admired Robert Louis Stevenson. Williamson presents Borges’s visit to St Andrews as a coming to terms with his early lost love.The New Yorker writer Alastair Reid, a Scot who was one of Borges’s ...”

“... of his book Mr McCowen casts doubt on the Virgin Birth – he is prepared to accept that his Lord may have been illegitimate. In claiming God was his father Jesus avoided the embarrassment of bastardy and when he is baptised he experiences for the first time the validity of his claim. He is a very scared man indeed and departs for a spell in the ...”

“... Write here the names of those you pray for. 70. Write here to whom you pray. 71. From here on you may add optional questions, and need not supply answers. (Success or failure in the above paper will lead inevitably to riches or poverty; define these in your own ...”

“... is everywhere. It’s more difficult to place Eggers as a writer. However well received his work may be – and reviews have generally been kind – his writing often feels like a side project among many other highly successful side projects. His books fall into the cracks between genres; they’re brought out in different editions by different ...”

“... novels. A few have achieved the status of bona fide classics: W.P. Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe, Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel and Bernard Malamud’s The Natural. It was the last two of those novels I kept thinking of as I read Chad Harbach’s highly ...”

“... obvious, even to the person doing the wanting, and talent, which you feel ought to be a clue, may be a red herring. During the war, he became an effective civil servant at the Admiralty, and turned down an offer to stay on – how dreadful to admit that bureaucracy is your true vocation. I’m tempted by the idea that Hughes set me a bad example, but ...”