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“... the will. I had the same reaction as I read Piers Morgan’s diaries. Whatever sense of humour I may have had drained away as the ever ebullient, jokey, matey, vindictive Morgan described a self-contained world of vacant celebrity and tawdry sensationalism that I have never quite believed anyone took seriously. But it becomes clear that Morgan took it very ...”

“... Richard Evans’s history of the Third Reich – it will be completed by a third volume covering the war – is an invaluable work of synthesis. The mass of specialist studies we now have makes a general history all the more useful, and not only, as Evans suggests, for those who know little about the subject. Evans, a social historian, aims to cover ‘not only politics, diplomacy and military affairs but also society, the economy, racial policy, police and justice, literature, culture and the arts ...”

“... of flintlock at dawn, but it is still associated with a certain glamour. The high-living image may hold true for some American ambassadors, many of whom are big donors and political appointees, but it’s not a realistic picture for most diplomats. In fact, diplomats are often quite isolated from the societies to which they are posted. Their central task ...”

“... and image, and especially the vexed relay between written and photographic evidence. Loch Ness may seem a whimsical subject for an artist whose source material has recently included psychiatric reports on Nazi war criminals and interviews from the 1960s with Minimalist artists, but it’s worth considering the machinery of print and picture by which the ...”

“... of kittens. More than half the space is divided off by a fence of stretched wires – perhaps Richard Serra’s standing slabs and rolled up sheet of metal are not so well poised as to be proof against a cannoning child. This means that one of the two Barnett Newman paintings can only be seen obliquely, that neither can be advanced on and retreated ...”

“... about its deliberate obscurity. It is the equivalent of shutting a door in its reader’s face. As Richard Sewall, her biographer, noted, ‘She enjoyed riddles, apparently enjoyed being one.’ But was she a riddle that wanted to be solved? Did she want readerly guests? Helen Vendler’s Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries and Lyndall Gordon’s Lives ...”

“... is said that some animals have a better claim to be cared for than a severely retarded child? It may be argued that it is not of practical importance that these ‘practical’ philosophers say these things, so long as other people keep a modicum of good sense. But it is rash to count on that through all political and social upheavals, and the many ...”

“... a society which, on a racial basis, promotes certain groups over others. People who feel this way may have the intuition that barring race as a factor in assessment is a simple, effective way of avoiding an illicit racial hierarchy. A third tendency – the one that issues in affirmative action – is to believe that race must be taken into account to assist ...”

“... and the Attlee Government, lost their places on the National Executive to Harold Wilson and Richard Crossman, the candidates of the Left. Dalton sulked, but Morrison made a shrewd and emollient speech against self-gratifying Conference resolutions which failed to impress working-class voters. Crossman himself was booed for confessing his intention to ...”

“... have been perfectly at home in the introduction to a student edition thirty years ago. It may be that the task he sets himself – that of taking proper cognisance of reception aesthetics, current bibliography and the more convincing variants of post-structuralism, while nonetheless producing cheerfully definitive thematic readings – is simply ...”

“... and as a theologian to evade it. Interrogated in the Tower in Cromwell’s presence in early May 1535, he was asked – according to the indictment – whether he accepted that Henry was now the earthly head of the English church, and replied: ‘I will not meddle with any such matters.’ A letter More wrote to his favourite daughter, Margaret ...”

“... to adultery. Since we are not told much about Othello and Desdemona’s sex-life, the connection may seem gratuitous. Greenblatt linked the two by interpreting a phrase of Iago’s, when he is describing his plot to entrap Othello, to mean that he will appeal to a guilt in Othello about the excess of his erotic feelings for his wife: ‘that he is too ...”

“... with the Pakistan government. The government denies this. Army officers admit that the strikes may have killed scores of al-Qaida fighters, and that the ISI may have supplied intelligence for the operations, but the missiles have also killed civilians, including pro-government tribal elders. The Pakistan army believes ...”

“... and a reader who wants detailed accounts of Ptolemy’s Syntaxis or Epictetus’s Manual may find them elsewhere. Not, however, in the Cambridge History. And here a critic may find room to carp. In at least two respects the book is conservative. Literary scholars prefer poetry to prose, and they prefer the ...”

“... on the Austrian resistance; but he has done little else. Another account of the controversy – Richard Evans’s In Hitler’s Shadow – is better informed, and more perceptive. Professor Evans shows in abundantly documented detail how the arguments the embattled historians are advancing ‘are derived, consciously or unconsciously, from the propaganda of ...”