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“... Victorian years. From the world of Landseer and Dickens to that of Henry James and Whistler, what Charles Darwin elsewhere called the ‘tone’ of mind had changed.Darwin turned 69 in February 1878. He felt that ‘large & difficult subjects’ were now beyond him and that ‘considering my age … it will be the more prudent course … to use my remaining ...”

“... The double-bottomed ship was from the start intended to be a public-private partnership: Charles II initially gave it vocal support but no money; Petty ventured some of his own funds; Viscount Massereene, a big Irish landowner, put in some more. The Royal Society, which was itself still hoping for Crown subvention, appointed an elite ...”

“... before that ‘war becomes like life itself. It’s all there is: not a passion any more nor a hope. Like life, rather sad and resigned, it wears a tired face, seamed and worn, similar to our own.’ All over Europe young men were finding out much the same thing, but this scholar and essayist, the friend and colleague of Benedetto Croce, put the matter ...”

“... as they do to the spirit of the age in which they appear. The Fountain, the novel which made Charles Morgan’s reputation, came out in 1932 and had a very considerable succès d’estime. It was much admired in France, where Morgan still has a solid reputation. Valéry admired it, writing that in Morgan’s novels ‘the song of life is always ...”

“... beheaded ‘for the horrid fanatic plot, contrived for the bringing in, as they then called him, Charles Stuart, and the restoring of monarchy.’ This remark functions mainly as an alibi for his loyalty to the post-Protectorate political structure, and is intended to shield him from the charge of being a closet republican, or a classical republican like ...”

“... in their doom, just like me. These days goldfish are my homies.Fishing is an occasion for hope. In my case, in the first instance, it was the hope of making a connection to my father, Bert Lahr, known to most people nowadays as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. An older dad, cut off both by his comedian’s ...”

“... poet like Hill is precisely that his medium, British English, is much more knowing than he can hope to be, or perhaps would want to be. However, recognising that British English is unavoidably depraved, let us be continually aware, and make our readers aware, of how duplicitous it is – that is at all events one way forward, and the way that Hill has ...”

“... they met the painter David, an Englishman who had befriended Charlotte Corday at her trial, and Charles James Fox – ‘rather lourd and maladroit’. With the help of a young American, Margaret and Katherine visited Tom Paine, ‘up half a dozen flights of stairs, in a remote part of the town’, and found him making models and playing with his two ...”

“... and France lives happily ever after in the belly of the beast.) Three years later, in a note from Charles Rivkin, Stapleton’s successor, Sarkozy has become the tetchy figurehead who has his plane diverted so as not to see the Eiffel Tower lit up in the Turkish national colours on the occasion of a state visit by Recep Erdogan. By now, realism has set in at ...”

“... Charles Sorley must have been the most brilliant of all the young poets who died in the First World War. Yet ‘brilliant’, with its flashy, brittle connotations, isn’t the right word. He was undeniably clever, and forthright, but also good-humoured and modest, often very funny, shrewd and serious, but never (the young man’s vice) priggish ...”

“... off before I was out of the building. I lingered in the front yard for half an hour in the hope that I might catch sight of him again – but without luck.I first visited Liberia in November 1989, the month the Berlin Wall came down. At the time, I was on the Africa desk of Index on Censorship and preparing a report on threats to freedom of ...”

“... church, and all the culture that went with it, was a leading candidate. In a letter of 1851, Charles Kingsley wrote of Cardinal Newman that ‘in him and in all that school there is an element of foppery – even in dress and manner; a fastidious, maundering, die-away effeminacy, which is mistaken for purity and refinement’ – and blamed the ...”

“... millimetre I would go out of my mind. I used to think then that had I had the chance to marry Charles Darwin (or Einstein or Metternich) I might have been able to accept the arrangements that marriage entails a little more gracefully. In the Eighties, long since divorced, I decided that marriage to Nelson Mandela (or Terry Waite) would have suited me ...”

“... Vale Royal, an epic based on the mysteries of Kings Cross, fits seamlessly into the continuum. I hope it is giving this elegantly produced book its due if I call it anonymous: egoic interference is minimal, the poet wills himself to disappear into his text. The fate of this degraded, fought-over, misrepresented landscape, between the nexus of railway ...”

“... less imaginative graduate assistants at the big state universities. It begins with an excerpt from Charles Brockden Brown and his 18th-century religious maniacs and ends with a story about a lovesick football coach in late 20th-century Albuquerque. Though it is not, of course, literally comprised of stories written only by white males, the bulk is still ...”