“... the whole thing there), his plain-but-emotional rhythms and syntax remind one of Larkin and even Andrew Motion. A more surprising influence is Eliot: ‘My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark’ has the sort of rhythmical hysteria and claustrophobic shadowiness that Hamilton has made his own; and a line from ‘La Figlia Che ...”

“... of Bryanston for Lord Portman; another was the castellated, constipated confection of Skibo for Andrew Carnegie; and a third was the ebullient, flamboyant Renaissance of Sennowe Park for Thomas Cook’s grandson. These houses were for social advancement, self-indulgence and conspicuous consumption, where display meant ...”

“... chapter makes no mention of the alternative line of Dickens biography that descends through Thomas Wright and Katherine Longley to our contemporaries Peter Ackroyd and Claire Tomalin. In his chapter on James Joyce Hamilton dwells exclusively on the author’s ‘patron saint’, Harriet Weaver. Surprisingly – for a study whose main concern is the ...”

“... Chapel Royal in 1515, written by the Venetian ambassador to Henry VIII’s court and included in Andrew Parrott’s The Pursuit of Musick? ‘More divine than human; they were not singing but jubilating [giubilavano].’ The exact meaning of ‘giubilavano’ has been long debated, to no avail. Or what does this résumé of national styles, written in ...”

“... peculiarities of the American political system that you can call the president a moron – or, as Thomas Friedman recently put it on the front page of the New York Times, ‘flat-out dumb’ – but you can’t call into question the sanctity or power of his office. Whatever your complaints, the president has ultimate military authority, and there are plenty ...”

“... than most. ‘The circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly’ included ‘Mr Andrew Gilligan’s broadcasts on the BBC Today programme on 29 May 2003’ since these had ‘closely involved Dr Kelly’ because they had alleged ‘(1) that the government probably knew, before it decided to put it in its dossier of 24 September 2002, that ...”

“... seen in an examination of two sections dealing with overtly political writings. Nicholas Canny and Andrew Carpenter introduce ‘The Early Planters: Spenser and his Contemporaries’ by reaffirming Spenser’s status as a great poet in the English tradition, and then by redescribing him as an ‘apologist’ for English rule in Ireland, someone whose writing ...”

“... it was 23 April, St George’s Day, is a wishful synchronicity first mooted in the 18th century; Thomas De Quincey’s counter-suggestion, that the date chosen for his granddaughter’s wedding – 22 April – commemorated his birthday, is attractive. He was one of 39 Stratford babies baptised that year, 23 of them boys. The birthrate was lower than in ...”

“... that the US federal government could on occasion align with Providence, as it had in the days of Andrew Jackson, the great champion of the white settlers on the frontier. Young Harry read Mark Twain, played the piano and listened to Mozart. He disapproved of boxing, guns and Wagner. Endowed with porch-front charm, he was self-conscious about his ‘girl’s ...”

“... It takes epic disasters to rouse their language to levels above the workmanlike. I except Andrew Greig, the Scottish poet who has gone on two Himalayan expeditions to write about them. If our touchstone (among living writers) is W.H. Murray, with his power of opening up a quiet, unremarkable hour in the mountains into layers and vistas of visionary ...”

“... and worked on the enlargements that Antonioni used in Blow-Up, but he couldn’t be less like Thomas, the photographer whom we first encounter leaving a London doss house where he’s spent the night taking pictures for an art book.) McCullin had started out as a freelancer with the Observer before he signed up with the Sunday Times Magazine in the ...”

“... Gates and George Soros, the CEOs of Google, IBM, Intel, eBay, as well as court-philosophers like Thomas Friedman. The true conservatives today, they argue, are not only the old right, with its ridiculous belief in authority, order and parochial patriotism, but also the old left, with its war against capitalism: both fight their shadow-theatre battles in ...”

“... readers grappling with the new transformational ideas for the first time. In the diaries of Thomas Archer Hirst of Halifax he has found the best example of an inquiring mind he could have wished for. Hirst copied passages from Vestiges and stitched them to others from different sources that had caught his eye, effectively constructing his own ...”

“... in 1808, may have been equally keen to share it: in Travels in India a Hundred Years Ago (1893) Thomas Twining told of meeting in about 1800 a ‘Captain O’Donald’ who claimed to be one of those present at Munro’s death. Having just broken his thigh in a hunting accident, he began to tell the story while awaiting rescue. Munro’s first name is rarely ...”

“... had discovered inoperable cancer. The surgeon told his companion, Monica Jones, who, according to Andrew Motion’s biography of Larkin, decided to keep the news to herself. She was worried about the effect of a terminal diagnosis on a man who had often expressed his terror of dying. So Larkin’s doctors kept up a cheerful front and told him that they were ...”