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“... Superman not by his ability to freeze objects by blowing on them but by his second life as Clark Kent. In an essay on Superman, Umberto Eco characterised superhero comics generically as an amalgam of ‘mythopoeic’ and ‘novelistic’ narratives: Superman is simultaneously an epic-eternal hero who exists outside time (the Man of Steel), and a ...”

“... something from the great religious battles of the middle of the 17th century, and that perhaps J.N. Figgis was right that ‘political liberty was the residuary legatee of ecclesiastical animosities.’ Certainly 1707 shows the Lowland Scots as skilled practitioners of the maxim: ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’ It is, however, a success story ...”

“... narrator without blind spots and a certain degree of myopia would be like Superman in his guise as Clark Kent, only pretending to need glasses. This narrator is in a different category – does she even qualify as a narrator if she isn’t present at the story she is telling? There is no acknowledgment in C’s part of the book that the trauma of ...”

“... Gopnik, played by Michael Stuhlbarg with a fine capacity for recurring surprise, as if he were Clark Kent who kept forgetting he had another identity, is an assistant professor of physics at the local university. He is just coming up for tenure, and one form of the petering-out joke is the series of visits he gets from his department chair telling him ...”

“... you don’t think he’s Jewish? Coming over from the old country, changing his name like that. Clark Kent, only a Jew would pick a name like that for himself.’ It is also, more generally, a wonderful piece of storytelling, indulging the old-fashioned pleasures that nowadays only historical novels and bestsellers seem to cater for: rooting for the ...”

“... had been shut out. The news that they were back up – given by a boy in a purple hoodie and Clark Kent glasses – got the loudest cheer from the room all day, louder than the cheer that greeted Bob Crow when he came to remind them that it was only when suffragettes broke windows that the world took notice. The new media are also a way to become ...”

“... and with more pleasure to her then I think in all the time of our marriage before’.) Alan Clark’s Diaries 1983-91, published a few years ago, were applauded for their beastly candour but Clark was nowhere near as winningly ingenuous as Pepys. Mrs Clark was generally pitied at ...”

“... of Superman and Batman’s deep whiteness that establishes Spider-Man’s metaphoric blackness. Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne live in palaces of privilege and operate from fantasy cities, Metropolis and Gotham, while working-class Spider-Man is a bridge-and-tunnel person, from Queens, in the real New York. Spider-Man’s good intentions get misrepresented ...”

“... never be persuaded to go to the Lords – he would spend his declining years growing cabbages in Kent. It was obvious all along that this was fantasy. He is still writing regularly for the paper (and very well) and became a peer in 1986. Deedes’s political colleagues used to say he was a journalist who had wandered into politics. Those who knew him as an ...”

“... year, Nature gave it an obituary. He had up to 40 glass ants’ nests constructed in his house in Kent, the better to observe the daily workings of these diminutive species. He was also a friend and neighbour of Charles Darwin. He provided the land on which Darwin constructed the Sand Walk at Down, where he pondered the problems of organic evolution as he ...”

“... introductory survey of Parliament (not only the Commons) between 1386 and 1421, and Linda Clark’s illuminating statistical appendices, this volume breaks new ground in providing a remarkably informative series of 135 substantial ‘constituency surveys’. Based on independent and original research, these range from Helston in Cornwall to Hythe in ...”

“... about its very concrete power to inspire action: an uneasiness that is pervasive in Kenneth Clark’s latest book. Feminine Beauty insists on the ethereal or strictly formal qualities of beauty, continuing the same line of argument as Clark’s magisterial earlier work, The Nude. The introduction to Feminine Beauty ...”

“... digress? Well I digress. Art has its historian in every century. From Benvenuto Cellini to Kenneth Clark, we learn the most from their personal memories, experiences, opinions. Do I claim to sit with the Masters? Yes, I do. His conflation of the historian’s mastery of ideas with an artist’s mastery of his craft is typical. But it would be a poor spirit ...”

“... learned and deeply enjoyable book, full of unexpected insights. The weight of scholarship which Dr Clark has put into her chapter on the ‘factual evidence’ after the ‘Conquest is evident only to the expert (or to those who ruminate on her startling bibliography). Professor Fell is one of the leading English philologists, and words are an important part ...”

“... of explorers, famous in their day, but now known only to Arctic buffs, such as John and James Clark Ross, Rae, Pullen, Collinson, M’Clure, Austin, Ommanney, Richardson, Penny, DeHaven, Kane, Forsyth, Bellot, Kennedy, Belcher, Inglefield, M’Clintock – and names of ships, such as ...”