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“... of London society in the 18th century interest in weight became a measure of male hypochondria. Joseph Addison imagined a weight-obsessed man who spent all day checking his weight by sitting on a pair of scales: ‘I do not dine and sup by the Clock, but by my Chair; for when that informs me my Pound of Food is exhausted I conclude my self to be hungry, and ...”

“... Land League were presented as non-constitutional headaches for O’Connell and Parnell. Michael Collins was a Treaty negotiator rather than a warlord. Outside in the world there were car bombs and hunger strikes, done in the name of our nation, in the name of history. Inside we were cleansing history, concentrating on those aspects of our past which would ...”

“... had involved not just military force but a dynastic switch: Maximilian’s elder brother, Franz Joseph, replaced their uncle Ferdinand on the throne. A dreamy romantic, Maximilian did not approve of his brother’s repressive instincts and was shunted into command of the Austrian navy – a punchline in search of a joke. He planted a luxurious exotic garden ...”

“... is always a terribly bad sign when people’s birthdays get to be celebrated, whether it be Nero, Joseph Stalin, Nelson Mandela or the Queen. But it is, above all, the Great Lie at the Centre. It demeans and corrupts our culture by commanding the worship of rank, not merit; of inheritance, not achievement. It makes people accept that sheer humbug is ...”

“... with non-publishing or foreign management at the highest level. Penguin, Hamish Hamilton, Michael Joseph, Frederick Warne and Longman – all once imprints with independent identities – now congregate within the Pearson group (best known for its ownership of the Financial Times). Random House UK (whose American parent was long since swallowed up by RCA) own ...”

“... consumed it with fervour; but the austere Harriet Martineau liked it too, as did General Gordon, Joseph Conrad and Edward VII. Its appeal spread far beyond British readers. R.K. Narayan dwells fondly on the ‘bitter tears’ he shed over East Lynne in his 1975 memoir, My Days: ‘Reading and rereading it always produced a lump in my throat, and that was the ...”

“... out to be McCarthy’s last crusade; in a formal and spectacular sense, his career ended when Joseph Welch, a Boston lawyer and counsel for the army, replied to the ascription of Communist connections to a young lawyer on his staff: ‘Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.’ McCarthyism had been ...”

“... failure. On the strength of that one film I would love to read a thorough life of Ford (such as Joseph McBride managed for Frank Capra, that other fragile hero). The reasons Ford ‘has such defenders’ are amply supplied in the book McBride has now written about him, which shows how we might do better not to understand our enemies too quickly, how even ...”

“... meant providing the scenario and captions for silent pictures). Mank’s younger brother, Joseph, followed four years later, also on a Paramount contract, and went on to write and direct movies including A Letter to Three Wives and All about Eve, which won him two Oscars. Mank’s own career wasn’t quite so dazzling, but his work on the screenplay ...”

“... ways in which we try to understand others. In a different kind of novel we might find out why Mr Collins is as he is, but in Pride and Prejudice it is enough accurately to trace his unique combination of servility and self-importance. Caricature can be sharp perception of a true pattern of behaviour. In Pride and Prejudice, as Woloch notes, ‘Elizabeth can ...”

“... Corbett family, ‘who were murdered During the Massacre of the Christians in Delhi’; to Thomas Collins and no fewer than 23 members of his extended family, ‘all barbarously murdered at Delhi on or about the 11th of May 1857’; to Dr Chimmun Lall, a ‘native Christian and a Worshipper in this Church’, who ‘fell a martyr to his faith on the day of ...”

“... uneasiness about the unwomanly impropriety of erudition. The example of her father’s colleague Joseph Priestley first encouraged her to write verse, but she published no poetry until she was aided (indeed, virtually compelled) by her brother, who sponsored her first prose publications as well. When a volume appeared bearing both their names but containing ...”

“... and self-help’ but also, Bermant thinks, an affinity with ‘Jewish associates such as Sir Keith Joseph’ (though surely Joseph – scion of a rich Anglo-Jewish family, Harrow, Magdalen, All Souls, wounded in action and mentioned in dispatches – was something of a patrician himself). Her devotees on both sides of the ...”

“... chosen an artful form of narrative that cannot carry any great burden of exposition. I wish that Collins had appended ‘In Pursuit of Guzman’ to the novel. E.L. Doctorow’s last three novels have returned to the period of his boyhood, the Thirties. Each features boy heroes and mingles daydreams of adolescence with the adult disciplines of Modernist ...”