I attacked Dawkins's book on God because I think he is theologically illiterate.

Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way.

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.

Like the rest of us, Tom Paulin is a bundle of contradictions. At its finest, his work is brave, adventurous, original and wonderfully idiosyncratic.

Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.

Anyone can be tolerant of those who are tolerant.

Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.