“... portrait,’ James once said. His reaction to Sargent’s portrait was to declare it a ‘first-class, living, resembling, enduring thing’. The Reform portrait is not great, but that’s what makes it a living picture in another way – there’s a polite boredom about James’s expression, his apparent lack of interest perhaps a way to mask himself. The ...”

“... say that bags are not your bag. The items on display include a sturdy container for a Second World War gas mask; a delicate 2019 bucket woven from bamboo, silk and leather; a Versace pouch punctured with safety pins; and – hello, Lucy Ellmann – a tasselled 18th-century falconry bag whose inside pockets are embroidered with a woman in a scarlet slit of a ...”

“... begins: ‘In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, a young man met a young woman in a classroom and did not speak to her.’ The young man, Saeed, is a dutiful son who lives with his parents. The young woman, Nadia, is strong and independent, and has cut ties with her family. She is ‘always clad from the ...”

“... the price of doing so is higher than ever. Even before the instability caused by Putin’s war, gas markets were failing to meet post-lockdown energy demands. Reserves depleted during the cold winter of 2020-21 haven’t been replaced. The UK only imports a fraction of its gas from Russia (5 per cent, compared with 41 per cent for the rest of ...”

“... her advisers recently revealed that she actively contemplated privatising it. During the Falklands War the BBC’s insistence on referring to ‘British troops’ rather than ‘our boys’ rendered the Prime Minister incandescent with rage. But the ITV franchises came up for renewal before the BBC’s Charter, and so it was the commercial sector which felt ...”

“... country, leaving it, and then choosing to return. He was born into the Ontario upper-middle class in 1913, and educated at two of its traditional preserves, Upper Canada College and Queens University. He then went to Balliol, where he wrote a thesis on Shakespeare’s boy actors. After Oxford he joined the Old Vic as an actor and lecturer on the history ...”

“... the particular is in the service of the general. Biography, a digressive art, is customarily at war with main themes in the history of ideas, but cross-comparison has been achieved here. And there are bonuses, also well integrated, as in the captivating chapters on Victorian Imperialists and adventurers in the bush. The skill with which each contributor or ...”

“... with them: ‘they destroy all one’s judgment – turn one into an ape.’ For an upper-middle-class young lady, born in the reign of Victoria, these were unusual sentiments. Song of Love provides a much clearer picture of Noel’s character than could be seen in the documents previously available. She told Rupert that when she was a child Edward Garnett ...”

“... example, contained the correspondence Lawrence had with Bertrand Russell during the First World War, another, entitled Lawrence in Love, presented the letters he wrote during his abortive engagement to Louie Burrows, one of the many girls who seem to have fallen irrevocably in love with him when he was an unknown youth. Now, it seems, those of us who live ...”

“... his campaign against the traditional parties, in 2018, he won over thousands of young middle-class professionals and students who hoped that the family fiefdoms – the Bhuttos’ Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the Sharif brothers’ Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) and the Party of Islamic Scholars, formerly led by Maulana Mufti Mahmood and now by his ...”

“... Katherine lies wincing upstairs and Kate grits her teeth against the pain of breast-feeding. The war zone may be only a suburban American house, but the family is stuck ‘in the trenches’, focused on surviving each new crisis yet ‘always losing ground’. Kate – the former globetrotter – grapples with nipple guards as her partner retreats to the ...”

“... Rafah would have to start walking to school at 3 a.m. in order to have any hope of getting to class on time – and to leave by 4 p.m. to be home by midnight. Ambulances were routinely held up at checkpoints. Since 2000, more than eighty Palestinians have died because they were not allowed through. According to the UN Population Fund, 56 Palestinian ...”

“... the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995, and on, after the Hamas attack in 2023, to the annihilationist war in Gaza and a rise in settler crimes on the West Bank. The future of the Palestinians, like the future of their tormentors, looks bleaker now than it did when the book was published.There are several British players in his chapter on events during the ...”

“... help draft and sign the Declaration of Independence; in Paris to negotiate the treaty ending the war with Britain; in Philadelphia for the creation of the Constitution. He had not only an uncanny knack for showing up where history was happening, but an instinctive flair for striking poses, whether holding the kite as the lightning struck, wearing a coonskin ...”

“... Ahdaf Soueif’s new novel felt bereaved: ‘I have derived more enjoyment from Anna Karenina and War and Peace,’ Lady Anna Winterbourne notes in her diary, ‘than from any other novels that I have read.’ The Map of Love suggests that Soueif herself may have Tolstoyan aspirations. Aspirations, not pretensions: there is an engaging modesty about her ...”