“... of voice.’ That gives the clue. The confident poetic voice takes things for granted, is never self-conscious about what it says, however unexpected or incomprehensible this may be. In a note on Betjeman’s ‘Myfanwy’ Amis says the poet has ‘got him where he wants’ with poems in this vein, ‘but I have never been able to work out quite where that ...”

“... policy, healthily excited by the new, politically and socially aware, but able to accommodate Robert (son of Edwin) Lutyens’s stores for Marks and Spencer as well as Richard Neutra’s blonde American beach houses. Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh, Cyril Connolly, Freya Stark, even Penelope Chetwode (Mrs Betjeman) shared the pages with respected authorities ...”

“... of, the Times on seven other pages. The Sunday Times features on six pages. The Times columnist Robert Harris gets two entries compared to Germaine Greer’s one, Gandhi’s one, or Mandela’s one. Noam Chomsky: nil. E.P Thompson: nil. The Times columnist Bernard Levin: two. Levin deserves a special mention. In the Times in May 1996, he implied that ...”

“... satisfy their curiosity: a sense of mystery pervades all her work. In the letters we discover her self-confessed longing for greatness – a yearning which could not be quelled, to the extent that she considered it her ‘demon’. We note a weakness for titles amounting to snobbery – her enjoyment of the aristocratic set and her pleasure at being addressed ...”

“... is no conclusive evidence either way, never went to bed with anyone and who, like some puritan and self-punishing Odysseus binding himself to the mast, chose to make his chief subject-matter the nude male body – which he rendered sometimes piteous and always impressive but never beguiling. Honourably, Dr Liebert avoids reductionism, and he confesses that ...”

“... of which astronomy is a very good example, justifies itself to its paymasters in essentially self-imposed terms. Technical spin-offs are mentioned, but the pursuit of pure knowledge is obviously an activity worth supporting, and comets certainly do not figure large on a map increasingly dominated by the visually unexciting but theoretically compelling ...”

“... and Luttrell wrote nothing. The literary remains of ‘Conversation’ Sharp fill a small volume. Self-conscious attempts to record talk only wreck its spontaneity. In Genius in the Drawing-Room Robert Rosenstone’s essay describes the New York salon of Mabel Dodge which ran (if that’s what salons do) from 1912 to 1914 ...”

“... of Gilbert Pinfold is the only one who loved the poor mad writer. Such matters are outside his self-appointed limits. Davis allows that Waugh knew most of the story when he started a novel, but finds that he only discovers his deeper purpose as he writes. Thus he speaks of ‘Waugh’s growing understanding of his major themes as well as his plot’ when ...”

“... simpler way of saying what Keller wishes to say. After all, a certain musical isolation (partly self-inflicted, like Beethoven’s) was an important aspect in the shaping of Stravinsky’s individuality, and it is not unreasonable that he should have fought shy of close involvement with such a man as Schoenberg except through the channel of an ...”

“... of the editor. The disbandment of a team of highly-qualified journalists with the independence and self-confidence to carry out inquiries which might damage powerful people made Sunday Times staff still more subservient to the editor. Yoel Cohen shows in detail how, man for man and woman for woman, the investigative journalists on the Sunday Times in 1986 were ...”

“... of the captives of Lebanon, the George Harrison of the hostage scene, the other one. The reporter Robert Fisk has confessed to him how he failed to follow up a dubious tip-off about where he was being kept in 1988. When Keenan was held hostage in Beirut journalists found themselves asking what the story was. I am not referring to the international news splash ...”

“... don’t know exactly why, it probably alludes to the drama’s ritual, even sacrificial origins. Robert Cowan remarks that tragedy ‘was born under tyranny but flowered under democracy’, though Mitchell Greenberg notes that in the 17th century tragic theatre enjoyed a golden period in an age of political absolutism. It is also worth asking why the decline ...”

“... defiant statements (Byrd used his to proclaim his allegiance to the pope). McCarthy attributes his self-assurance in both the highest and the lowest musical styles of the day to the difficult trajectory of his career. ‘He did not merely survive constant change: it made him even more capable.’The scant biographical detail means that it is difficult to ...”

“... European empires, while many dreamed of an extra-European empire of their own. In 1684, Robert Barclay, an Aberdeenshire Quaker, founded his own settlement in east New Jersey; and in 1698, perhaps a quarter of Scotland’s liquid capital was expended on the Darien Scheme, an abortive attempt to establish a colony in Central America. After this ...”

“... corporations in Nitassinan as ‘colonialism’. In the early days of colonialism, as part of the self-justifying process of presenting subjugated races as inferior, eager scientists, intrepid explorers, shameless promoters and greedy businessmen – often one and the same person – found common interest in coercing or bribing ‘exotic’ natives to be put ...”