“... at lunchtime on Friday. She said it in part superstitiously, summoning the worst to dispel its power. The consultant replied that she wasn’t worried about sepsis. We believed what we were told: that the broad-spectrum antibiotics would work and Martha would ‘turn a corner’. But on Saturday, my day with her, she became dizzy and could hardly stand.On ...”

“... a Guards regiment. It was a habit of his to quote out of nowhere and out of context the lines from Henry V, ‘In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man/As modest stillness and humility’, and I do think that most of the time he behaved as if he believed this, but there were some concerns about which he could be pushy with a persistence devoid of all ...”

“... soul brother or sister of Sister Winniki would insist.There seems to be no limit to the reach and power of popular psychology. Everyone now knows that mothers are an essential item of equipment in any psyche, and that though relations with mothers may be difficult or even dreadful, attachment to them is mandatory. They also know, as a corollary, that a denial ...”

“... that they overlook its obvious concomitants in keeping down the standard of wages and purchasing power, and the spread of desolation over their own countryside. Their eyes only seem to be fixed on overseas trade.There are those who argue that it was this depression – and the sense of betrayal it engendered in farmers between the wars – that led the ...”

“... stirred in me the deepest, darkest melancholy. Local sunlight after rain had, quite unaided, the power, not just to make my spirits drop, many things did that, but to convince me, beyond anything that hope could counter, that life would never again have anything to offer me. Even today, when in actuality the sheen on a bright, wet surface has more or less ...”

“... he was ‘Cold-Shoulder Craig’ – and their landlord wondered why they needed so much extra power: Wright had what appeared to be a whole room full of generators at the back of the property. This fed a rack of computers that he called his ‘toys’, but the real computer, on which he’d spent a lot of money, was nearly nine thousand miles away in ...”