“... noticeable that Toynbee has more to say about her male than her female ancestors, an emphasis that may simply reflect the realities of educational advantage and career opportunities over the past century and a half. Her mother, Anne Powell, came from a decidedly unintellectual background: Anne’s father, George Powell, was a lieutenant colonel in the ...”

“... for our adventures with others, a provisional set of assumptions that can be modified, but which may be resistant to modification, about what someone else is likely to say or do. We are surprised, sometimes, when our imagined idea of another person’s character is overturned by the reality of their behaviour – and novels and dramas and even epics often ...”

“... by Callaghan and his own actions, but in the wider Labour movement. He calls Part Six of the book (May 1979-May 1980) ‘Beginning Again’, and it was on the strength of that new beginning, and of the ‘youngsters’ (of whom more later), that he was to prepare his campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour ...”

“... of certain Protestant writers, and a Protestant, or Catholic, cast of mind, both of which may occur in people professing either, or neither, religion. The book also upheld the claims to Irishness of those whose Ireland, non-Gaelic or not, is every bit as valid as any other. Its aim, you might say, was the opposite of sectarian: yet the word ...”

“... that are ‘telling’, that fit into the author’s pattern, still being aware that readers may detect a different pattern, quite unintended. There must be a sort of chronological thread to this ‘life and times’ since he wants to present the story as being typical or ‘exemplary’, showing ‘the movement of a certain time in provincial England ...”

“... records a younger brother, Jose, then aged one, never, it seems, mentioned by the painter. Jose may be a clerical error, but more probably he lived only for a short time. In any case, no male sibling survived as a rival for the love of Picasso’s mother, on whose support he could always count. Little is known about her, and Richardson, while acknowledging ...”

“... political factions are more concerned with orchestrating the massive funeral procession, which may or may not help to undermine the military dictatorship. Most of these characters have a strong sense of the potential historical significance of their actions, but Donoso gently deflates their pretensions. Whatever their ...”

“... Sticks and stones may break my bones ...’ Like most children, I learned this piece of wisdom with tears streaming down my face, hurt to the quick by the taunts of my playmates. At the time, it seemed a very foolish statement. What was this splitting of hurt into ‘real’ injury and ‘unreal’ feeling? I certainly felt hurt ...”

“... whose biography in a sense we are writing, and to whom we thus come as close as we can. The idea may sound fanciful, but it is pursued with remarkable force and fascination in Richard Holmes’s study. Richard Savage, the young Johnson’s alter ego, was a poor and talented writer whom Johnson had met in Grub Street. Each took a fancy to the other, and they ...”

“... provided it doesn’t interfere with the equivalent right of others. In particular, none of us may impose our own, contested conception of well-being as the basis for the political order – and that applies even to a conception like Raz’s value pluralism. The difference between Rawls’s view, based on the requirement to treat people as equals, and ...”

“... anticipate matters by murdering all his male offspring but one. Of course ‘blood tanistry’ may be due to no more than a squeamish copy editor, but even minor errors in a book which has to be convincing in its handling of a large range of disparate information, or else succumb to suspicion as to its accuracy at every point, at once put the reader on the ...”

“... Courtney; a prolific writer, she also produced a six-volume dictionary of female biography, and may have been the author of an Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women. Understandably, the compilers of the DNB in its early years had a particular predilection for biographers, but they did not read the signs of the times so well as to believe ...”

“... the editors of the three slim volumes that make up the collected Letters frankly tell us. Editors may be happy to leave it at that, but unfamilial biographers are less inclined to do so. Speculation is made to fill the blanks which Hallam Tennyson has created for posterity. Typically, the speculation shadows the spirit of the age. In 1904, influenced by Max ...”

“... in this world the virtuous are punished for every sin they commit, so that in the next they may have uninhibited bliss; but the wicked receive any reward which they deserve in this world, so that they may suffer fully for ever. The social inversion may be appealing to the ...”

“... talked what he called the ‘true Ciceronian’ (i.e. always ending every period with a verb), may have been the death of Bach and certainly did nothing for Handel. Still, he clearly removed a lot of cataracts; he had a steady hand and a sharp knife; there is something horrid in his own account of how he cured a noble lady of a drooping eyelid, she calling ...”