“... The Stripping of the Altars was one of those rare books which have the power radically to alter our understanding of a large piece of the past. When A.G. Dickens published The English Reformation in 1964, reviewers predicted that it would stand the test of time as a nearly definitive account of its subject. ‘Masterly’, the TLS pronounced. ‘There ...”

“... young man’s name is Chevalier, which was the name of the man friendship with whom helped to ruin Robert Oppenheimer’s career. Chevalier was not gay but equally reprehensibly a Communist. 11 May, Long Crichel. Yesterday as I was driving down to Dorset (with no radio) the prime minister had gone up to Trimdon and his constituency of Sedgefield in order to ...”

“... embarrassed by the lubricity of an erotic reverie recounted by Stingo, her father’s narrator and alter ego in the novel, over a recently deceased maiden. Here’s the passage: For now in some sunlit and serene pasture of the Tidewater, a secluded place hemmed around by undulant oak trees, my departed Maria was standing before me, with the abandon of a ...”

“... of a hidden part of him that was more real to him than much of what he did. Philip, his fictional alter ego in The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans, Thomas’s only novel, believes as an adolescent that ‘there was something at the back of my mind, not quite hidden from myself and my schoolfellows – a weight, a darkness – which was against intimacy.’ What Thomas ...”

“... find myself very much so for the Children,’ he wrote to his cousin. But this attachment didn’t alter his attitude to the Africans he bought and sold. He was a slave factor, his business was to sell people. The voyage of the Eliza, which set off in 1788 from Bristol to the Bight of Biafra, collecting its human cargo and then transporting it to Barbados and ...”

“... observable effects. The four elements possessed qualities that could be enhanced or suppressed to alter their basic nature. Significance was attached to sequences of colour change, above all the passage from black to the desired red but also movement through a spectrum of hues and shades, including the spectacular iridescence of the ‘peacock’s tail’.The ...”

“... in the coastal village of Deià in Mallorca. There they had their second child and they asked Robert Graves to name him – Philip. ‘The Relics’, which appeared in Mathews’s first collection, The Ring (1970), is a set of variations on imaginary landscapes in yellow and red, bringing to mind the Phrygian Midas, and a landscape turning to clanking ...”

“... under way in Britain, with contributions by Yorkshire Television, Lords Devlin and Scarman, and Robert Kee. Irish public opinion, provincial to the last, finally fell in behind its UK counterpart. What is most unexpected about the Hill and Conlon books, perhaps, is the intensity of their descriptions of prison life. Innocence may sharpen the memory: at all ...”

“... water on the side of a narrow-boat during a family holiday with another Tory MP, the somewhat wet Robert Atkins. During that trip he asked Mr Atkins point blank whether there was any realistic possibility of him becoming prime minister. Anderson records that the two men decided there and then that there was, but that his best tactic was to avoid being ...”

“... Fiction from Godwin to Doyle, shows how much more the public hoped for from its police.2 Sir Robert Peel had insisted that a policeman should have neither ‘the rank, habits or station of a gentleman’. The English policeman has always had a lower than average level of education, and has generally been paid less than a skilled worker. You can hire a ...”

“... Yet, to his credit, Infantry Officer Sassoon had been entirely serious when he wrote his letter. Robert Graves and other friends understood that much, which was why they were so keen to get Sassoon certified as insane. If he was mad he could not be held responsible for his actions. So Macamble’s advice makes perfectly good sense. For Sherston to be proved ...”

“... the Pentagon was able to assert that ‘the people killed were Taliban/al-Qaida’; it was able to alter its objective from catching bin Laden to liberating Afghanistan; and in April it could announce its attempt to kill the commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had been never been part of either al-Qaida or the Taliban. The second way of seeing the Taliban ...”

“... at this neglect. It would be agreeable to believe that the present stir of interest might alter the situation: but the rather freakish God’s Fifth Column, even supported by Futility, does not seem a strong enough base on which to rebuild a reputation. It may even reinforce the old view that Gerhardie was no more than a quite interesting and rather ...”

“... by Roger Livesey, is a version of Powell. Theo, reserved and considered, represents an idealised alter ego of Pressburger, who gave him the eloquence and insight Clive lacks. Taken prisoner in England during the First World War, Theo returns at the outbreak of the next war to seek refuge. But he risks being held as an enemy alien (Pressburger himself had to ...”

“... political discourse could be challenged and altered. In 1999 Brown was furious with the journalist Robert Peston for describing that year’s Budget as ‘seriously redistributive’ in the Financial Times. ‘Why did you write that?’ he asked Peston. ‘It was profoundly unhelpful.’ This anxious refusal to make the case for a more equal country meant that ...”