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“... could he have argued that he was doing his country much of a favour. A third consideration may obtain. What if, as is generally the case, your country has its repulsive and attractive sides, and so do your friends, but there is something wrong with you? Some crucial bit of the moral or the rational animal that is, in your own case, simply ...”

“... diaries get their reward. If we see the politics of the Sixties more from the point of view of Richard Crossman than, say, of Michael Stewart, the reason is that Crossman kept a diary and Stewart did not. Nevertheless, the possibility of publication is seldom the only reason for keeping a diary. Like any habit that becomes addictive, diary-writing has its ...”

“... Clarke argues (I am sure correctly) that between its response to We can conquer unemployment and Richard Hopkins’s evidence to the Macmillan Committee the Treasury shifted the ground of its opposition to state-financed capital works from an economic-ideological one to a ‘practical’ one. He seems to suggest (though I ...”

“... utter the profound Post-Modern truth that ‘Politics is showbiz for ugly people.’ Yes, you too may be a mediocre, flaky-scalped, pudgy sycophant. But, with the right ‘skills’, you also can possess a cellular phone and keep a limo on call and ‘take meetings’ and issue terse directives like ‘I want this yesterday, understand.’ Unfortunately, the ...”

“... the work. And she explores this with as much questing and well-furnished unobtrusive cleverness as Richard Sewall brought to his two-volume life of Emily Dickinson – another ‘dotty spinster’, who wrote of her own life: ‘Nothing has happened but loneliness.’ Stevie Smith would not, I think, have said that, though she was much aware of loneliness. Her ...”

“... Michael Roberts’s New Signatures (February 1932), which included contributions from Julian Bell, Richard Eberhart, William Empson, Cecil Day Lewis, Stephen Spender, William Plomer and Lehmann himself. Through Spender he met Christopher Isherwood. The friendship with Spender from the very first seemed edgy, uncertain and uneasy, but durable for all ...”

“... uselessness as soon as the war started was curious, but Danchev withholds judgment. Others may not feel so well disposed. A chill wind blew over Liddell Hart’s reputation again just after the war, when he had recovered his spirits and, through the happy chance of a close relative being in charge of a nearby prisoner-of-war camp, had become acquainted ...”

“... 1894, whose reasoning, as Stephen Walker points out, is extremely rum. It rules that ‘in no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the exercise of one which stands lower on the psychological scale.’ Walker reasonably remarks that it is not even clear whether explanations of ...”

“... Italian cemeteries and to the marble hands of deceased royal children at Osborne House, but there may also be a growing fascination with the mixed feelings which such art stirs in us and some curiosity as to the consolations which it once provided. For the artists who created these things – unlike the modern sculptors who appear to have a similar interest ...”

“... suggests that ‘indifference and bafflement are today more common than hostility,’ and that may be so. But there has been some excellent work done on Pound recently: Richard Sieburth’s Instigations, Leon Surette’s A Light from Eleusis, and now Alexander’s manageably-sized study of the whole corpus of the ...”

“... frequently implied than invoked. The preferred manner is that of indirection. While Mr Sparrow may delight in a guise of bluff, non-specialist plain-speaking, there is irony in his soul. His most unguarded admissions of belief are often found in parentheses, just as his most joyful attacks may be confined to ...”

“... from her as Dugdale’s were from him, but as close as Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were to Richard Nixon. The ‘misunderstandings’ over Westlands were attributed to those civil servants such as Mr Bernard Ingham and Mr Charles Powell whom Mrs Thatcher sees many times each day. Isn’t this something we should be concerned about? Three decades after ...”

“... of a palpable untruth about her dying husband be described facetiously as rushing into battle? One may also note as significant the misnaming of the article in question, which was actually reprinted as ‘The Orthodoxy of Enlightenment’ (the ‘collection’ was Anna Karenina and other Essays). Most dubious, however, is Morpurgo’s handling of ...”

“... Madox Ford’ and William Carlos Williams’s ‘To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven’. And you may say that his luck holds: for Robert Green is also an admirer, but his book is thoroughly sensible, unbedazzled and discriminating, the book of someone who has heard of other writers and is in no kind of ‘Special relationship’ to Ford. What he has set out ...”

“... book seems to have been hopelessly unfinished at the time of his death. In Capote’s case, we may be forgiven for asking if the fame didn’t far outstrip the promise, and if his was rather less a major talent dissipated than a minor gift cleverly marketed. Taking the generous view of Capote’s talent and importance after the publication of his first ...”