“... is, I think, Bishop’s final formal representation of literature as sheer ongoingness. The bus may be flowing, but it is never flown. And the sharp demarcation of the word ‘historical’, so final in ‘At the Fishhouses’, has given way to a concept altogether less angular – the grandparents, out of time at last, talking in that Eternity which is ...”

“... months after Giraud arrived on Ile de France. As soon as he stepped off the boat from France in May 1777 Giraud was placed in chains and confined to prison. On 15 August, in the late afternoon, he and another prisoner, a young boy named Cézar, were digging a trench close to the island’s administrative headquarters. Giraud and Cézar were chained ...”

“... By my count, though I may have missed a few, this is the 25th volume of Ezra Pound’s highly distinctive correspondence to see the light of day. The first selection of his letters, edited by D.D. Paige and culled from the years 1907-41, was published in 1950, when Pound was four years into what would be a 12-year sojourn in St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, to which he’d been confined indefinitely after pleading insanity at his trial for treason in 1946 ...”

“... maintained a discreet and sad silence. By a happy contrast, just a week earlier, Theresa May had underscored the government’s à la carte approach to human rights when she embraced other judgments of the European Court in deciding to intervene to stop the hacker Gary McKinnon being sent to the US, because to do so ‘would give rise to such a high ...”

“... side. My father advised caution: ‘Best not to have too many illusions; the anti-imperialists may not have been as solid as you think.’ Both my mother and my father broke politically with the family, and became communists. My father was very active in the party, which delayed their wedding a bit. My grandfather refused to allow her to marry a communist ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... as a continuing challenge. To be sure, those who dreamed of creating a genuine liberal democracy may have failed to achieve their immediate goals, but they issued a powerful invitation to establish the sovereignty of the people. This dynamic concept, Morgan writes, ‘has continually challenged the governing few to reform the facts of political and social ...”

“... As a result, any biography of Wells is bound to have a lot to say about sex. His sexual career may have started slowly enough, but once he got going he bonked for England – numerous long affairs supplemented by even more numerous casual liaisons. He liked intelligent women and was attentive to them, he flirted readily, he was fun, and latterly he had a ...”

“... and there is even a computer game in which you can play at bashing the British at Canton. Wasn’t David Cameron aware of all this when he arrived in Beijing in November 2010 wearing a Remembrance Day poppy in his buttonhole? Or the right-wing press, when it heaped praise on him for allegedly refusing to remove it when the Chinese asked him? That will have ...”

“... To say that nothing preceded it is to claim that God didn’t have to bring it about, indeed may long since have bitterly regretted doing so. From a theological viewpoint, the universe could very easily never have happened. God created it out of love, not need. Since he is complete in himself, the dismal truth is that he does not need us at all, any more ...”

“... Economic Review in 2014, cheerfully conclude: ‘Decision-making ability, unlike preferences, may be justifiably manipulated.’ Just give the poor a bit of a nudge, and they’ll shape up.That was then. And as we now know, the libertarian paternalism of the Cameron and Obama governments gave us Brexit and Trump instead. As William Davies observes in ...”

“... Tebbit said, barring a recession, he could not see Labour being returned again. In that, he may be right. As Peter Jenkins explains, the Labour Party may only be able now to hope for about 35 per cent of the vote. There are fewer trade-unionists and council-house tenants, and the proportion of public-sector employees ...”

“... speculating upon possible contributors and reaching the cautious conclusion that Wordsworth ‘may well have contributed in some capacity’. I think that on this occasion his speculations might have been more bold. The journal is ill-edited and lazily conducted. It is an eight-page sheet, coming from the press of Daniel Isaac Eaton, a printer of great ...”

“... reasons given are pitiably sad. The most distressing case this surely of its kind and one that may awake the national mind to saner methods of curing a terrible disease than by criminal legislation.’ On 19 and 30 April Casement made further references to Hector Macdonald’s suicide. In March in the same diary, as Casement’s ship made various stops on ...”

“... debatable. It’s a shocking story, with one of the victims having been battered almost to death. David Cameron is quick to move in and claim the crime is evidence of ‘a broken society’, conveniently ignoring the fact that Edlington, the village in question, is smack in the middle of what was a mining community, a society systematically broken by Mrs ...”