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“... What is to be done in a country whose genius has gone?’ Lev Loseff asks in his poem ‘June 1972’; Loseff’s close friend Joseph Brodsky had left Leningrad that month. The question brings to mind the title of Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel, which soon came to codify a central preoccupation of the Russian intelligentsia. But in this instance it also raises the notion that the poet’s departure symbolised a graver loss, to do with the country’s identity ...”

“... in Moscow. Mirsky was one of the most important Russian literary critics of the 20th century. G.S. Smith, author of this tremendous and impassioned biography, plainly thinks that he was the greatest of them. ‘Mirsky’ is not just a name but an expression, short for his History of Russian Literature which was first published in London in 1927 and which has ...”

“... at the Organisation of African Unity summit in Khartoum. To Britain’s disgrace, as George Ivan Smith points out, it will be remembered that Uganda Airlines flights to Stansted, where Amin bought the Western luxury goods that kept his inner circle loyal, went on until 4 March 1979, when the Tanzanian Army was on the point of ousting him. With the honourable ...”

“... apiece’ and ‘several Englishmen of pith, / Sixteen call’d Thomson and nineteen named Smith’, whose deaths go unrecorded by the epic muse and who are so numerous that Byron has to leave most of them to be listed in the official necrologies. Byron’s Don Juan is full of Homeric allusions, both loyal and jeering, and his handling of the ...”

“... at club. Back here 9 to read Lucretius with Richmond and Dodgson. Then at 11.15 went in to F. Smith and had long talk about marriage. Bed 12.30, an hour later than usual. This is certainly energetic; but it is entirely institutional. John Cann Bailey might as well be writing his piece on Gibbon in the way that he reads Lucretius, ‘with Richmond and ...”

“... of gout, will find much of the information in these pages riveting. Gout was likened by Sydney Smith to walking on his eyeballs. It not only created fiery anguish in the big toe but caused a white precipitation at the knuckles. Horace Walpole wrote of ‘chalky rills running from the fingers’ and ‘a hail of chalkstones and liquid chalk’, as if from a ...”

“... G.S. Rousseau on late 18th-century nerves could just as usefully have been a lot shorter. Nigel Smith is fascinating on ‘The uses of Hebrew in the English Revolution’ and Peter Burke’s little sketch of post-Medieval uses of Latin is wide-ranging and excellent. Other chapters suffer from being wide-ranging and bad. Victor Kiernan’s ‘Languages and ...”

“... straight line while others turned and stumbled’, and is very much the Millat character in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Karim is supposed to embody the dissonance and non-conformity of second-generation Bangladeshi youths. The focus of moral panic about Asian gangs, they should instead be listened to. Given half a chance, they will talk about their feeling ...”