“... in the ‘Imperial theme’, the theme of timeless empire continually renewing itself over huge tracts of history by means of ‘translations’ and ‘renovations’. This imperium sine fine was seen by Kermode as a paradigm of the ‘classic’ – that is to say, of that notion of a literary model or measure binding on all European cultures. In his ...”

“... based on some classic text, preferably Shakespeare; when involving some OK modern author, H.G. Wells, Maugham, Greene, Huxley or the like; when starring players famous in the legitimate theatre, Olivier, Richardson, Laughton: or when wrapped in a European reputation, such as Garbo’s or Dietrich’s. Citizen Kane may not have been the first film to break ...”

“... in ‘the bright, buzzing lobby’ of the YMCA. The annual crop of bright-eyed valedictorians from high schools named after Abraham Lincoln faded year by year into greying black men in threadbare suits, carrying umbrellas and bowler hats, wearing coats with Chesterfield collars, speaking expansively of ‘business’ and ‘finance’, with the Wall Street ...”

“... Forest, where his brother Septimus was in an asylum, or to his family’s new house in Tunbridge Wells, or up to Lincolnshire and his cottage in Mablethorpe, where he could wander the long, empty beaches and the post arrived no more than once a week. Sometimes he would head to Amsterdam or Calais, ‘to Florence, or to Killarney, or to Madeira, or to some ...”

“... seem to have assumed that, if the historian himself does not undertake the task, some H.G. Wells will carry it out, and will acquire undue power over the minds of men.’ The use of the anachronistic example is telling: Butterfield is projecting the particular form of his own preoccupation onto Ranke. Disparaging references to ...”

“... to nurse Henry back to health. ‘He had an inexhaustible authority for me,’ he wrote to H.G. Wells on 10 September 1910, ‘and I feel abandoned and afraid, even as a lost child.’ It has often been assumed that the death of William was the strongest incentive for the writing of A Small Boy. Thus in his immensely useful compilation, A Henry James ...”

“... pacifist and left-wing views. After scrutinising the British Union of Fascists’ shopfront in the High Street and paying too much for a gin and lime at the Blue Boar Inn, he goes for a walk with a man in plus-fours, discussing local history, the League of Nations and the increasing likelihood of another war. Returning to his inn, he finds himself to be the ...”

“... wore that coat; she perspired.’ Miss Kilman does not merely exist in an atmosphere of what H.G. Wells once termed ‘mackintosheriness’. She brandishes it as a weapon in the war of ideas. She is a fierce critic of a social system designed for the benefit of ‘the most worthless of all classes – the rich, with a smattering of culture’. Her criticisms ...”

“... novels. Forster’s view of the celebrated and painful disagreement between James and H.G. Wells is expressed in Aspects of the Novel; he seems pleased rather than sympathetic to see James ridiculed, and even joins in the teasing. He firmly awards the judgment to Wells, a disquieting conclusion if you remember the ...”

“... solved, it went into production. In 1903, in a short story published in the Strand magazine, H.G. Wells had conjured up the idea of gigantic machines which he called ‘Land Ironclads’: they were now on the verge of becoming a reality. On 28 December a further conference was convened, this time with the happy task of finding an official name for the new ...”

“... been a different attitude towards the world of the Underground. In The Time Machine (1895), H.G. Wells portrayed the beautiful, degenerate, soft-headed heirs of the aristocracy frolicking in the sunlight, prey, on dark nights, to the cannibalistic attentions of an underground-dwelling industrial proletariat. ‘There is a tendency to utilise underground ...”

“... probably have been noticed a great deal more, for Carr was an eminent left-wing historian, had a huge record of publication, and had embarked, 35 years before his death, on a History of Soviet Russia which has been described as ‘monumental’ and ‘a classic’. By the time he died, the 15th separate book of this History – The Twilight of the Comintern ...”

“... novel’. There was the ‘old narrative method’, the traditional tale, represented by H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett and Compton Mackenzie. At the other end of this contemporary spectrum there was the ‘dangerous’ Dostoevskian novel in which the writer has what Eliot calls ‘the gift, a sign of genius in itself, for utilising his ...”

“... hand. She probably read them during the Twenties. The marked-up passages of the keen young high-school pupil offer an unerring foretaste of the mature writer. Underlinings at random, from Fors Clavigera: ‘The chief, and almost the only business of the government, is to take care that no man may live idle.’ ‘And the guilty thieves of Europe, the ...”

“... The layman explains his love of God, and his fondness for his ecclesiastical tradition. The high point was reached more than three hundred years ago when Sir Thomas Browne published his Religio Medici, and Johnson’s indebtedness to this tradition is seen best in his borrowing of two habits common to such books: the sarcastic ridiculing of all secular ...”