“... a drainage pipe under his tennis court. As the BBC’s Nick Robinson remarked, ‘the political class has lost control of this story. No one knows where it’s going.’ 11 May. To Westminster. Entire place traumatised. No one talking about anything else. The Speaker gave a right bollocking to Kate Hoey and Norman Baker for allegedly colluding with our ...”

“... into an advanced social democracy: it was a ‘welfare state’, in which the working class was rapidly undergoing ‘embourgeoisement’ through social security and full employment; Labour was now unmistakeably a national rather than a class party, and the trade unions had incorporated themselves into the ...”

“... was still voting for the Conservative Party. Neuheiser questions older assumptions that such class ‘deviance’ was a result of deference, whether instinctive, prudential or the result of beguilement from above. He argues that popular Conservatism was enthusiastic and proactive, rather than cynically contrived or sullenly subservient. Nor was it ...”

“... Such parentheses hint at his political and non-religious opinions, his sexual experience and his class-consciousness. On the last page, he arrives at Cambridge and remarks: ‘For the first time in my life I was surrounded by the upper classes en masse. They all looked bigger and stronger than me!’ Another Cambridge man, Sir Denis Forman, is of the ...”

“... of aristocratic power, wealth and leadership which are seen here as ending with the First World War. The postscript’s connection with the main text, however, is left tantalisingly vague, with the impression that loss of supremacy has not affected the aristocracy too seriously, that they have continued to adapt successfully to changing circumstances just ...”

“... given his relatively late start. Like so many scholars of his generation he got a second-class degree (in 1938), Firsts seemingly being regarded as a bit Widmerpudlian in Oxford in those days. The war put an end to a spell of research in Paris, and after failing the army medical he used family contacts to vault ...”

“... passages that made it a positive pleasure to read.’ He praised her work, in front of the class and in private advisory sessions, and the pair got along well, but he says he didn’t expect to see her again after she graduated – for one thing, she was due to be married. Two years later, Lasdun received a message from Nasreen telling him she’d ...”

“... used to stay on their way to France; it was requisitioned by the navy during the Second World War and has housed a set of offices for freight forwarding agents ever since. Dover’s port – which handles 12 million passengers, three million lorries and two million cars a year – is still a money-generating machine. But all this energy and sense of ...”

“... of constraint. Though Mernissi grew up in a household where the radio transmitted news of the war in both Arabic and French, the young men affected the mannerisms of Rudolph Valentino and even the women sometimes ventured collectively to the movies (taking care to buy up tickets for four rows, while occupying two), the walls of the urban harem often ...”

“... films provoked and when Britannia Hospital was shown at the Cannes Festival during the Falklands War the British delegation staged a walk-out. But quite over what it would be hard to say. There’s a scene in the film where, during a strike of hospital workers, an ambulance is allowed through the picket lines but hospital porters insist on taking their tea ...”

“... states have on their territories the weaponry of a foreign power and armies bound by oath to make war on them if the interests of Russia demand it. The dynamics of inter-state negotiation make a fascinating study. As in the old, Communist days, the leaderships meet, publicly pledge friendship, make bland statements, issue high-sounding declarations – and ...”

“... for, Ethiopia. The ras explained that his country had reached a critical point in its history. The war in Eritrea had already been lost, and he doubted whether it was still possible to reconcile the embittered Eritreans. The last chance of saving his country from disaster was to persuade the Emperor to announce plans on his 80th birthday for the succession ...”

“... for many of the essays in the volume – on the development of Parliament (Robert Blake), ‘War and Peace with Wales, Scotland and Ireland’ (Hugh Trevor-Roper), art and popular taste (Quentin Bell), the evolution of the English landscape (Richard Muir) – are excellent and briskly-written popularising surveys. But the whole enterprise, I do think, is ...”

“... about his life in a mini memoir, chronicling his childhood outside Paris during the Second World War. In a particularly vivid scene, Bruno gets lice from the helmet of a dead German and the old woman who is looking after him douses his head in kerosene at the block where they decapitate chickens:Bruno put his head on the stump. The old woman treated his ...”

“... intent on waking the dull clod to dreams of heaven. In the words of the War Cry, they ‘would arrest his attention, and talk to him, one on one side, and another on the other, thus keeping up a continual fire-fire, and volley of advice. Many a poor fellow was thus extricated from the Devil’s clutches’ and taken to the hall ...”