“... political climate. The early 1980s, like today, were a bad time to ask the government for money. Lord Hailsham had described the social sciences as ‘a happy hunting ground for the bogus and the meretricious’. It was, as Pearson says, a belief widely held in Tory circles: the social sciences, they felt, lacked rigour as a discipline, producing results ...”

“... ruled by a proconsul, Hubert Murray (brother of the classicist Gilbert). In the opinion of Lord Hailey, Murray’s system amounted ‘to no more than a well-regulated and benevolent type of police rule’. Murray himself spoke of ‘administration by bluff’, and insisted on the importance of keeping up appearances. ‘Discarding one’s socks leads ...”

“... and Edward Young (Night Thoughts). For a while, early in his career, Hill acted as secretary to Lord Peterborough, the future honorary Scriblerian; he was also later distantly linked with Bolingbroke, to whom he addressed star-struck letters as a foot-soldier in the ‘patriot’ opposition to Walpole. Hill’s connections provided Brewster with an alibi ...”

“... Walpole to take up sculpture for therapeutic purposes after the suicide of her dissolute husband, Lord Milton. Her special forte (apart from cross-dressing) was dog sculpture, and Walpole regarded her work as equal to Bernini’s; she also presented busts of Charles James Fox and Nelson to Napoleon – Fox, because of her connection with the Whig opposition ...”

“... second book of the Novum Organum . . . A plain man finds his stomach out of order. He never heard Lord Bacon’s name. But he proceeds in the strictest conformity with the rules laid down in the second book . . . ‘I ate minced pies on Monday and Wednesday, and I was kept awake by indigestion all night.’ This is the comparentia ad intellectum instantiarum ...”

“... then at least well thought of by physical scientists and of use to their researches. Impressed by Lord Rayleigh’s country-house laboratory at Terling Place in Essex, Loomis established a superbly equipped laboratory in an annexe to his house in Tuxedo Park, and there began to entertain a succession of eminent, often émigré, often Jewish scientists whose ...”

“... partisan reporting of the siege of East Aleppo presented it as a battle between good and evil: The Lord of the Rings, with Assad and Putin as Saruman and Sauron. By essentially handing over control of the news agenda to local militants, news organisations unwittingly gave them an incentive to eliminate – through intimidation, abduction and killing – any ...”

“... the late Georgian politician and socialite, were followed by a life of Monckton-Milnes’s son, Lord Crewe. The latter was the quid pro quo for access to the archives and was, Pope-Hennessy admitted, ‘less than inspired’. Its appearance in 1955, however, started a train of thought in the mind of Crewe’s daughter Lady Cynthia Colville, who had been a ...”

“... don’t concern literal ghosts. ‘It is impossible to lay the ghost of a fact,’ Marlow says in Lord Jim, a little before Stephen Dedalus starts his discussion in a Dublin library – only four years before, if we think of the 1904 setting of Ulysses rather than the time of the writing of the remark. I’m pretty sure Marlow is right about facts, but do ...”

“... initially shared across Europe and the world. Two days after the storming of the Bastille, even Lord Dorset, the British ambassador in Paris, couldn’t conceal his enthusiasm: ‘The greatest Revolution that we know anything of has been effected with, comparatively speaking – if the magnitude of the event is considered – the loss of very few ...”

“... and that each section undercuts the one before, with the last, ‘Eleven Addresses to the Lord’, revealing the wholly ironic import of the book’s title. Such bitter, self-directed ironies, conjured by a single section (if not line) of the best dream songs, are the most impressive feature of his work. Only Whitman and Pound (in his early ...”

“... whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. It would, in a word, be the home of a people living the life that God desires that man should live.’ While Eamon de Valera dreamed, Sean Lemass, increasingly pragmatic and impatient for power, was left in charge of Irish industry. In the Fifties, as de Valera clung to power, four out of ...”

“... regard Alan as her husband. His second marriage (to Eve Crosland, sister of Tony) meant a second home and a second family – but with Alan hopping between both. Just as, when he left Margaret to live with Eve, he had continued to spend part of each week with Margaret, so when he eventually left Eve in the late Sixties, he went back to Margaret but continued ...”

“... The media described it as a resounding popular triumph and crowed about ‘investiture fever’. Lord Snowdon devised special ‘tasteful’ souvenirs for the Event – Investiture pie-funnels and Investiture doilies. In a word, more lies, more kitsch. Nairn is, though, more interested in how the Crown has denatured Ukanian nationalism and national ...”

“... threatened to cut passages from The Age of Innocence in 1920; but when the editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal proposed cutting her autobiography by a fifth in 1933 – and reducing the Journal’s $25,000 fee accordingly – Wharton pronounced him ‘at liberty to cut out anything he wishes, but not of course to back out of his price.’ No doubt she was ...”