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“... as from the more recent New Romanticism of 1940s poetry. Younger writers, taking their tone from Orwell as well as from Leavis and Empson, were adopting tougher attitudes and plainer idioms. ‘The Movement,’ Scott wrote, launching the capitalised noun on its successful career, ‘as well as being anti-phoney, is ...”

“... early 1960s.The subcultural change that led to the demise of this aesthetic was, according to George Melly, signalled by a ‘secret society’ that congregated at the party for the V&A’s Aubrey Beardsley exhibition in the summer of 1966. The next future would be looking backwards. Archigram’s architectural collages had always included ‘dolly ...”

“... This, too, is in the main a political narrative: a struggle for mastery between Asquith, Lloyd George, Baldwin, MacDonald, Chamberlain and Churchill. Other topics were included here and there. But as he remarked in a comment on the problem of constructing general histories: ‘political history provides the acts of the drama; and the rest ...”

“... Twist was ‘the TRUTH!’ Even Tolstoy needed at times to make the same point. Henry James or George Eliot, on the other hand, never give the impression that the question could arise: the distinction was not part of their artistic outlook or method. But as a touchstone it is still very much around, and can take unexpected forms. Importunity about truth ...”

“... for performance. The history of the essay – from Hazlitt on his first acquaintance with poets to Orwell on the sex life of the common toad – is the history of writers taking a break from other forms in order, not to ask themselves que sais-je? but simply to strut their stuff. Hardly anybody has done that to better effect than Gore Vidal, whose essays are ...”

“... better known and loved than Forster himself, though here having to answer to the first name ‘George’, perhaps by contamination from the actor George Arliss, once, but no longer, famous. In discussing the contents of the book it might be best to begin by disposing of Appendix A, which is devoted to 11 poems, mostly ...”

“... In October 2011, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that George Soros had violated insider trading laws more than two decades ago in dealings with the French bank Société Générale. Soros has given billions of his personal wealth to fund liberal political organisations, notably his own Open Society Foundations, which operate on a global scale and have supported anti-totalitarian movements from Poland’s Solidarity to Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, as well as countless other organisations that promote human rights ...”

“... Rocker and any anti-Bolshevik Marxists he could find. He also managed to find a British edition of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which wasn’t published in the US until after the Second World War. Orwell celebrated the anarchists in Barcelona, who had been opposed by both the Americans and the Soviets. Struck by the ...”

“... chips as by roast beef. He might have added that the ‘sandal-wearing vegetarians’ scorned by Orwell are almost as recognisably English a type as the beef-gobbling John Bull. He might have compared the English beef fetish to those of other nations – Argentina, say, or Japan, with its beloved Kobe cattle. He would have inquired closely into the diet of ...”

“... Faith in Europe seems to be another area in which Stonehouse’s idealism has died. According to Orwell, if most novel reviewers were honest they would have to say: ‘I have no thoughts whatsoever about this novel.’ Had Ralph been written anonymously, it would be a nullity. As it is, one reads it, almost hating oneself, for the piquancy of passages like ...”

“... Inimitable. In his essay on Dickens, remarkable for its combination of admiration and perplexity, Orwell points out that for all Dickens’s generous involvement in social issues and endless speeches at charity dinners, there’s little representation or understanding of the world of work in his novels, or of the working class; the characters are intensely ...”

“... of Tariff Reform was, or that Free Trade Unionism had nothing to do with the TUC, or how Lloyd George dished Asquith in 1915 and 1916, the sections of the book dealing with how the press treated these things will be incomprehensible. Koss has no time to stop and help you. Matters become easier as the book approaches the present day. This is partly, of ...”

“... been led to expect insights a little sharper than those on show here. This story of Margery and George Ince, living in Rome, where George is employed by some sort of multinational philanthropic and acronymic organisation, falls into the same painless slot as Nancy Mitford’s Don’t Tell Alfred. The story turns on the ...”

“... and impressive that ‘Dent was willing to invest in so many lengthy and intimidating classics: George Grote’s History of Greece in 12 volumes, Hakluyt’s Voyages . . . in eight, J.A. Froude’s History of England in ten, 15 volumes of Balzac and six of Ibsen.’ No less impressive was the stamina and catholicity of the implied Everyman reader, and the ...”

“... The cool, courteous Alexander Kinglake and the hot, contentious George Borrow are two of the best-liked and most influential travel writers of the 19th century. They were contemporaries for much of their long lives (Borrow died in 1881, aged 78, Kinglake in 1891, aged 82) but play very different roles in the 20th-century imagination ...”