“... efforts to reinvent a British tradition of patriotic, elite paternalism were heavily influenced by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book The Spirit Level, with its strange subtitle, ‘Why Equality Is Better for Everyone’. Its underlying assumption was that inequality could only be tackled by an appeal to the rationality and self-interest of those ...”

“... devotion, purity and faith, and hence for a right disposition in taking communion, so that ‘I may receive not merely the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, but also its reality and power’ (non solum sacramentum . . . sed etiam rem et virtutem sacramentum). On this point, then, the theological contrast between externality and interiority which ...”

“... liberal pronouncements, including an anodyne contribution to the recent volume of essays edited by Richard Kindersley, In Search of Eurocommunism.* Incorporation could hardly go further than the Bustelidos saga. My impression of the absorption of Spanish Communism into liberal-centre politics was further strengthened by the all-party mass manoeuvres that took ...”

“... the work of writers like William Blisset and Herbert Knust. I would have added John DiGaetani’s Richard Wagner and the Modern British Novel, which was published four years earlier, but Martin claims that a book of that title ‘by Bernard di Gaetani’ was ‘under preparation at the time of writing’. The chapter on Yeats is a tissue of fancies (Lady ...”

“... to what Showalter sometimes seems to suggest), in any straightforward statistical fashion. One may plausibly contend that, for much of the past two or three centuries, women have outnumbered men in the ranks of the mentally disturbed. Still, for the most part, this has not been in such gross disproportion that one could sensibly call the disorder a ...”

“... as a brilliant relic of its own time but as an unstilled voice in the conversation of ours. We may explore and even admire the minds of Gladstone’s mentors and contemporaries: Peel’s earnest reforming zeal, Palmerston’s gung-ho gunboat liberalism, Disraeli’s sugar castles of empire – though each is splendid in its way, they do not speak to us ...”

“... the building except in the bars, restaurants and ‘any other situation where the dignity of MEPs may be compromised’. So I proposed to film Farage as he went to collect his moolah from the allowances office. As he opens the door, he turns to me and says: ‘Come and film this, it’s a feeding frenzy in here.’ But just as I’m about to do so, a French ...”

“... you can describe what you are feeling as love. Love finally goes beyond reason – someone else may see what you see in your partner while not being in the least in love with him or her – but it is not antithetical to reason, as writers afraid of being robbed of their brooding inwardness by some bloodless theorist sometimes believe of their ...”

“... These images, which astonished the Surrealists-to-be when they were first shown in Paris in May 1921, provided the basic template for the Surrealist picture, even for painters as visually different as René Magritte. While Surrealist images were sometimes patterned on screen memories, Surrealist objects were often modelled on sexual fetishes, which, in ...”

“... was as if the westward movement of settlers were itself a force of nature.’ Chakrabarty may have been right that it’s impossible to write a history of the planet without giving up long-held views about causation, the sequence of events or the specificity of time and place – the bread and butter of most historical research. Then again, those ...”

“... her alone. Take for a final example the renowned physician, collector and charitable benefactor Richard Mead. When Pilkington first approached him for assistance – she was a distant relation of the Irish branch of the Mead family and was going by the name ‘Mrs Meade’ at the time – he humiliated her, deflating her literary aspirations and dispensing ...”

“... secure his precious three votes. In the end, South Africa won the final bidding round 14-10, so we may infer that the trip was a success. But subsequent rumours that $10 million also found its way from South Africa to Trinidad may have had something to do with it. As David Conn writes in his exemplary history of recent high ...”

“... too quickly. ‘Is it conceivable,’ he once wondered, ‘that (by a strange Nemesis) a parodist may become his own original? Can type and anti-type, parody and anti-parody be thus combined in one person and one poem?’ Inside Clough’s most scathing ironies there’s an uncertainty about who is getting the better of whom. It led him to put some of his ...”

“... and the Cladeus, buried the stones in silt. Very little was visible when the English antiquarian Richard Chandler rediscovered the site in 1766; recovery efforts began in the next century. Since the 1870s, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut has supervised excavation, assisted more recently by the local Greek ephorate. New finds still come to light: an ...”

“... reads this, or as he would probably prefer to say, if he has this ‘drawn to his attention’, he may care to know that more than one of the guests gave me separate but identical accounts of his conduct at this soirée. He evidently has a knack of inspiring affection and loyalty in his friends.) Now, I am merely a lone scribe living on my depleted wits. Do I ...”