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“... John Searle is known primarily for his extensive writings in the philosophy of language, but in recent years he has published some celebrated iconoclastic essays in the philosophy of mind. His ‘Minds, Brains, and Programs’, for example, challenged the fundamental assumption in artificial intelligence that cognition can be re-created by the manipulation of physical symbols according to a formal program ...”

“... theory run through his Latin dramas on Biblical themes. In the first half of the 17th century most major English poets – Herbert, Milton, Marvell, Crashaw, Cowley – were bilingual in English and Latin, and the few who weren’t bilingual could jog out a few elegiacs for their friends. Something went horribly wrong with this tradition of writing. By the ...”

“... too early. A full-of-himself student in Nashville in the 1930s, he was taken up by Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom, and most of his later academic appointments could be traced back to this connection. Not that Jarrell ever felt inclined to gratitude: another of his famous, and most joyous, thrusts as a reviewer was aimed at the vitals of his early Agrarian ...”

“... interminable number of serialised TV Westerns, such as The Lone Ranger and The Virginian, with the major advantage that aliens, unlike Native Americans, do not form any part of the television audience and are, therefore, universally inoffensive. Supporters could claim that this is a classic case of an art-form – science fiction on TV – which has made and ...”

“... fill in the background to Priestley’s career: an edition of his scientific correspondence, a major study of the natural philosophy of his period, even (in 1976) a stylish 18th-century chemistry lecture delivered in imitation of his hero. We are now offered the first half of a thorough biography, based on the sources which survived the destruction of ...”

“... the right – appear to regard Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and John Adams as the American equivalents of Plato, Aristotle, Cato and Brutus, while the wider culture acknowledges the near-superhuman qualities of the men of 1776. The founders in their periwigs, breeches and frockcoats hold a secure place in the popular ...”

“... to be looking for them, is that Stuart was looked after by a man who used to be part of my family: John Brock, who ran a drop-in centre in Cambridge as part of the Wintercomfort homeless charity. Stuart was one of the people who campaigned for John’s release after he was imprisoned, along with Wintercomfort’s ...”

“... aesthetic excellence in the way it depicts something, we must first perceive what it depicts. And John Hyman is interested in how depiction is even possible. This question has fascinated philosophers for a long time, but it can very quickly get a grip on any reflective person. However familiar we are with the business of linguistic communication, for ...”

“... from which they, like the rest of us, suffer – what Justice Holmes called their inarticulate major premises. They do not always succeed in doing so and sometimes they do not seem to be trying very hard. But the restraint is there. The professional restraint is that they inherit from their long life as practising barristers a knowledge of the development ...”

“... needler and picker of quarrels with his elders. The compulsion led to his death in a duel with Major Martynov, a duel strangely close – at least in its scenario – to the loaded encounter between Pechorin and Grushnitsky. The details of treachery are much less convincing in that encounter than they are, say, in Hamlet: a large percentage of A Hero of ...”

“... negative. Again, I believe he is wrong – or at any rate I hope he is. These, of course, are the major issues facing his country, and much of what he has to say reflects at least a measure of popular opinion. Willy-nilly, his beliefs, ambitions and actions are being inscribed in history. Khasbulatov would – does still – call himself a reformer, and ...”

“... capitalism’, claiming allegiance to a mixed economy in which the state would play the major role and capitalism would be confined to shops and small enterprises. Rutskoi in particular has long made plain his detestation of most aspects of market behaviour. Lebed claims to support reform, but when questioned, falls back on statist ...”

“... When he started off in particle physics, the field was in ‘a Tolstoyan phase’. Major discoveries were reached with home-made instruments for detecting cosmic rays: particles were accelerated free of charge by astronomical processes. Later came large, man-made accelerators. Particle physics entered ‘a long Napoleonic phase’ and became ...”

“... The most determined will arrange to disappear from the face of the earth, like Thomas Pynchon, a major force in modern fiction who is, to all biographical intents and purposes, a cipher. The morbid secretiveness of authors as a class compared, say, to film-stars, sportsmen or pop-musicians is mysterious. Are they ashamed of their lives? Do they feel that ...”

“... extremely few and surely inadvertent rather than ignorant. What I shall linger on, however, is a major change which remains unmade: that of the English title for Proust’s great work. Remembrance of Things Past is an improper title, long familiar to English readers but dispensable – it is not much used as a title, since most people, I fancy, talk of the ...”