“... became famous as the chime of Big Ben) was noted ‘for the perennial freshness of his interest in young men’ – though he, like Simeon, was drawn to them by his evangelical faith in their souls as well as by their faces. His great-nephew made Balliol synonymous with tutorial concern for the young. There were dons who ...”

“... a boy Harry moves between conscious belief in his father and subconscious doubt. As a young man, it begins to be a matter of conscious doubt and subconscious belief. The latter is more dangerous, and more poignant. At one point Harry refers to his ‘thirsty craving’ to have his father ‘inflating me, puffing the deep unillumined treasure-pits ...”

“... and children. He was born in 1818 in Marseille and died in 1910 in the Crimea. He danced as a young man in Nantes, Bordeaux and the Teatro del Circo in Madrid, and his account of his youth could serve as a plot for a ballet. In his memoirs, published in Russia in 1907, he writes about a tour to America in 1839 that never really happened, or at least not ...”

“... Some sense of history, however vague or inaccurate, has always been an important factor in helping young people define their hopes and fantasies about their eventual place in the world. The story of Dick Whittington, fabled Lord Mayor of London, has for centuries helped underpin a belief that extreme social mobility always remains a strong possibility for everyone, however illusory the idea may often be in practice ...”

“... addition to the three-volume official life published by his former private secretary, Sir George Arthur, in 1920, a host of shorter studies and several investigations into the circumstances of his death. The present offerings add remarkably little to the body of knowledge about Kitchener already available. Philip Warner’s is little more than an opinionated ...”

“... of the miners’ strike of 1984-85, the questions remain, in ascending order of importance: was Arthur Scargill, then and still President of the NUM, the right leader for the strike? Could the strike have been won? If it had, would this have improved the fortunes of the labour movement? Would such an improvement have altered the course of Thatcher’s ...”

“... and mercurial and overweight and bore more than a passing resemblance, it was often remarked, to a young Hitchcock, who made several comic appearances in the novels in the guise of the boys’ reluctant sponsor. Jupiter had entered a competition and won all three of them the use of a gold-plated Rolls-Royce complete with an English chauffeur by the name of ...”

“... spirit of Beethoven, [who] said … he was fond of me, and that in nature I was like himself as a young man … What would the doctors say to that? A Ticket certainly, for insanity. No, it is the beginning of a new life, a new vision.’Gurney died in 1937, aged 47, after spending the last fifteen years of his life in psychiatric hospitals, leaving behind ...”

“... news of his romance with Jessica Lange, whom he was then partnering in Country, had just broken. Arthur Miller’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe had caught the headlines in the past, but to get the girl and join the top league of male box-office stars at the same time was a new story. There was much dissection of Shepard’s life-style, the subtleties of his ...”

“... Lindsay’s contribution to Declaration, an anthology of protest pieces by the so-called Angry Young Men. Coming back to Britain is, in many respects, like going back to the nursery. The outside world, the dangerous world, is shut away; its sounds muffled. Cretonne curtains are drawn, with a pretty pattern on them of the Queen and her fairytale ...”

“... appetite for acknowledgment was hardly sated by the perennially defaced statue of Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris outside St Clement Danes. The interesting peer of the realm Lord Ashcroft KCMG wrote about the unveiling on his website conservativehome: ‘I was privileged enough to share that special moment … as a guest of the Bomber Command Association. As ...”

“... when talent and privilege meet. This book has several faults but at least one great merit: Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale have seen that Misia’s personality, even if it can never quite be captured, remains highly interesting for the light it casts on how talent can cohabit with gracious living and yet still keep its distance. Misia features a good ...”

“... In Arthur Schlesinger’s court history, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, which might without unfairness be called the founding breviary of the cult of JFK, there appears the following vignette. Schlesinger had been asked to carpenter a ‘White Paper’ justifying Washington’s destabilisation of Cuba, in which the high-flown rhetoric of the New Frontier might form a sort of scab over the fouler business of empire ...”

“... on the changes I have seen. The most considerable change has only just occurred to me. When I was young we all believed in Progress and so did a couple of generations before us. We followed the guidance of Dr Coué and chanted in unison: ‘Every day in every way I am getting better and better.’ Progress was a watertight guarantee that, despite temporary ...”

“... you could see what they were about. Nice views, appealing animals, snow scenes, the occasional young woman in varying quantities of folksy clothes: you knew where you were with pictures. ‘Captive Andromeda’ by Arthur Hill (1876). Confusingly, though, the one public building in Bournemouth you might visit in ...”