“... he wrote to Michel Strauss, a student at Harvard: Hungary is a very romantic cause; all sorts of young men want to go there and die for liberty, although plainly they cannot be of any use now that the Russians have crushed the resistance. But they very properly feel that something must be done, that awful things are happening, that one cannot be supine, and ...”

“... writings and practices, which … academics deem … taboo’. In his essay on Knight, Michael Taylor quotes the critic on the political theology that lay behind his poses – the thought that ‘the religious importance of literature’ should be proclaimed ‘in a voice of authority’ – and concludes that this phrase can be used to ‘sum up ...”

“... over it effectively ceased to exist. It is true that individual politicians like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove will be pursued by some of their referendum pledges for as long as they are part of a government tasked with delivering on the result. But they have the advantage of being able to claim that the voters should judge them on their record in office, not ...”

“... and passing a building site I slowed down to protect my eyes from the likelihood of grit. A young Roscommon boy asked, ‘Are you happy?’‘Not very,’ I said.He beamed at hearing a fellow countrywoman.‘Any chance of tea at four?’‘No chance,’ I said (I had to be somewhere).‘You won’t forget us, will you?’ he said.‘I won’t,’ I ...”

“... powers to set the house in order. His preferred candidate for the role was Eduard Karl Joseph Michael Marcus Antonius Koloman Volkhold Maria Habsburg-Lothringen, Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See. The back-up, in case Habsburg proved unavailable, was the commander of the Pontifical Swiss Guard.As an analyst of the modern administrative ...”

“... to get back in. A nightmare, my own: to be locked in a dark, stuffy nursery cupboard with Boris, Michael, Nigel and their pals. England will become a place the young want to get out of, in search of fresh air and light.James ButlerThere is​ now a knot at the centre of British politics. If politicians push for inclusion ...”

“... figure in his forties. He explained that as a police chaplain he had come across a number of young people in detention and had offered them what he called ‘my spiritual services’. They had doubts, they had problems, they had fears, he said with the utmost gravity. When asked about their physical state, he said that he had only considered their ...”

“... in middle age. A few years later, she also agreed to have a biography written by the historian Michael King, who took the approach of telling a ‘compassionate truth’, defined as ‘a presentation of evidence and conclusions that fulfil the major objectives of biography, but without the revelation of information that would involve the living subject in ...”

“... grew like an oak-tree, and acquired a strong pair of hands and a fresh colour. 3) He grew like a young oak-tree. He acquired strong hands and a good colour. 4) He throve like an oak. His hands grew strong and his complexion ruddy. 5) And so he grew up like an oak. He had strong hands, a good colour. 6) And so he grew like an oak. He acquired strong ...”

“... Burundi. On the way, I’m stopped at numerous Hutu roadblocks. The barriers are manned mostly by young people with clubs, hammers or machetes. At one, a small boy is holding a nail-studded cudgel with tufts of bloody hair. The smell of putrefying bodies by the roadside is sickening. The starter of my dilapidated car is defective and the militiamen lay down ...”

“... inside J.C. Penney’s or Costco or Safeway, they’ve looked hardly less exotic than poor Michael Dukakis did on board his ill-advised tank. But the moment that Sarah Palin stepped up to the mike at the Republican Convention in St Paul, and began talking in her homely, mezzo-soprano, Far Western twang, she showed herself to be incontestably the real ...”

“... two nations, Remainia and Leaveland,’ the blurb might run. ‘Remainia is a thriving country of young, highly educated people of a myriad ethnicities, the streets bustling with shops, cafés and restaurants. Leaveland is a country of the old, the white and the nostalgic, of ruined factories and boarded-up shops. Rushing along the network of high-speed rail ...”

“... psychology – as opposed to the psychology of types – was an interest in form. The composer Michael Friedman, who died much too young last year, left a list of column topics which included the thought that ‘I seriously think Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the great modernist novel.’ It is possible to have an argument ...”

“... 1960s, a café on the island of Capri. She was doing the Times crossword. Greene and his friend Michael Richey came in from Mass at the church across the square and she overheard them at a nearby table fumbling for a line of Robert Browning’s ‘The Lost Mistress’:Tomorrow we meet the same then, dearest?May I take your hand in mine?Mere friends are we ...”

“... as though they possessed some special felicity that was more fertile than strength.’When a young man called Kendrick arrives with a terrible pronouncement, Darrelhyde identifies in him the danger of science without humanity. Kendrick pursues progress but doesn’t really think about where his or anyone else’s experience fits in. He knows to smile and ...”