“... 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 compromised by those gestures towards ‘the English Spirit’, ‘the making of a ...”

“... however, to have produced small results. In 1927, Barnes quarrelled with his latest protégé, Henry Hart, who responded with a bullet-point denunciation of Barnes and all his work. Of the teaching aspect, Hall mocked his employer’s ‘delusion that eighteen boys and girls, selected by whim, listening to a woman recite with no conviction and no charm ...”

“... Instead, I was truthful, and told her it was as if I was living in that terrible movie Regarding Henry, in which Harrison Ford gets shot in the head during a convenience-store hold-up and afterwards becomes a mental child and can no longer make love to his wife. I used to be able to do this; I know I used to be able to do this. I used to be able to make love ...”

“... was among the properties (they included Kirkstall Abbey) granted to Thomas Cranmer on the death of Henry VIII. It wasn’t actually included in the royal will but was part of the general share-out that occurred then to fulfil the wishes supposedly expressed by Henry VIII on his deathbed. Not far away is Harewood House (where ...”

“... to have him in the Cabinet all the same. Powell was uneasy (‘it’s like having a debate with Henry VIII – I was conscious that he had the axe down by his chair’), while Macmillan complained that ‘Powell looks at me in Cabinet like Savonarola eyeing one of the more disreputable Popes.’ Powell won. Lord Home came to the Cabinet room one day to find ...”

“... 1936 Buick in 1949, and how the dealers rooked him on each trade-in. In another, he is hired by Ma Bell to lecture her junior executives on The Brothers Karamazov, in the hope of reducing ‘patterns of over-conformity’ among the staff. Schwartz is unable to appear natural or at case in these pieces, and it is hard to believe that each one underwent numerous ...”

“... he could have given us the Court of George IV just as his hero Holbein gave us that of Henry VIII – but he saw history painting as a duty and he rejected the invitation with disdain. The transformation that Ingres worked on flesh does not obliterate personality. M. Bertin, the journalist, hands on knees – almost, but not quite on the point of ...”

“... way. To the end of his days, he had no idea who his father was. Erikson’s name may now ring a bell for very few people, and even they may be surprised to realise that he died only a few years ago. He had by then had a long, long life; his period of renown as psychologist, author and sage could be said to have begun in the mid-1950s, when his book ...”

“... the New Republic, as chairman of the American Veterans’ Committee and as a liberal supporter of Henry Wallace, Michael Straight became for a time a quite vigorous and effective opponent of the Communist Party of the United States in the years before the House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthy got into their stride. He was lucky to escape their ...”

“... not a stroll among the great monuments of a now canonised modern period – a diving bell into Post-Modernity, if you will. This term must be understood as referring to a scene and historical situation, rather than designating a style itself by now relatively antiquated (of the great Post-Modernist names – Charles Moore, for instance – very ...”

“... And yet, Malcolm believes, Plath ‘did not write – and could not have written – The Bell Jar or Ariel in her native Massachusetts’. She needed to shed her American accent, appearance, identity, to become an artist; ‘like so many women writers, she had to leave the daylight world and go underground to find her voice.’ Not only Plath but the ...”

“... or ways of forming adverbs, as well as by citations and references. (The thing which first rang a bell in Alice Kelly’s mind was Metesky’s use of the plural word ‘injustices’, accompanied by a threat ‘to take justice in my own hands’; both the word and the phrase also occurred in the Mad Bomber letters.) Some of the evidence in these cases is ...”

“... playmates and arrange a proper reunion. Having put Rabbit Angstrom to rest and closed the book on Henry Bech, Updike understands the formalities of reintroducing characters who have been kept in storage. It’s been more than two decades since the original novel and the mental picture of its warlock and witches was colonised by the movie version, remembered ...”

“... around the subject, sometimes a short walk, sometimes a full-scale peregrination in two parts (Henry V, The Best Years of Our Lives) and once, for sentimental reasons, three parts (Monsieur Verdoux). The prose is nicely adapted to allow for both humour and gravity, and for something in between, a wry or sombre thoughtfulness: a surprising instrument alike ...”

“... African story he told were shown to be without empirical foundation. But none of this mattered. Henry Louis Gates got it right when he said in a 1998 interview that Roots is a ‘work of the imagination’. This may be the reason it captured the imagination of millions and why genealogical work began a new phase of expansion. New organisations were ...”