“... Parliamentary behaviour matters. Time and again, on doorsteps and at meetings, especially in the West Midlands and on the South Coast, I was rebuked for the House of Commons bear-garden – not that I myself ever shout or indulge in rudeness and animal noises. In one sense, the charge is unfair, since it is coloured by the broadcasting of Prime Minister’s ...”

“... last capitalist slump in the Thirties, much to the ideological comfort of fellow-travellers in the West. By 1989, however, its ramshackle structure was manifestly tottering, unable to sustain the pressures for internal reform proposed by Gorbachev. Far from offering the Left a distantly rose-tinted prospect of the virtues of actually existing socialism, the ...”

“... on the streets. By the time journalists were leaving Somalia, for Switzerland and other points west, none but the cussed could have levelled serious criticism about the way Operation Restore Hope had gone thus far. The Americans, with support from other nationals including the French and the Belgians, had effectively made the supply lines of Western aid ...”

“... Taliban.President Donald Trump, 10 September 2020This is manifestly not Saigon.Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, 15 August 2021Laura and I, along with the team at the Bush Centre, stand ready as Americans to lend our support and assistance in this time of need. Let us all resolve to be united in saving lives and praying for the people of Afghanistan.George ...”

“... of proprieties; the wilfully bad execution and recourse to deskilled methods; the spurning of the West End for Shoreditch and Hoxton – all the ‘alternative’ themes and media and sites and forms of attention have been emulsified into a phenomenon on which Tony Blair smiles. Stallabrass follows the tracks of this social monster, which can be identified by ...”

“... to look around and take note of the inert materiality of their surroundings; in contrast to the West, where people are always frantic and never properly notice what goes on around them. In the East, people were more closely acquainted with the waiting-room and, caught up in the delay, experienced to the full the idiosyncrasies of their world, in all its ...”

“... of relief I can recall little else about it. Human behaviour that day was more striking. My friend Anthony had wandered further along the bank and missed the wave of excitement. As he came back he saw us intent on our scrutiny and panicked, ran and slipped, tumbling into the mud with flailing arms, his binoculars spinning around his neck like a slingshot. Our ...”

“... idea two decades later, having in the meantime denounced the Officials as pro-British traitors. As Anthony McIntyre, a former Provo, reflected, We, who wanted to kill them – because they argued to go into Stormont, to remain on ceasefire, support the reform of the RUC, uphold the consent principle and dismiss as rejectionist others who disagreed with them ...”

“... in 1963, jostle Ghanaian proverbs collected by Schipper from Peggy Appiah and her son Kwame Anthony Appiah; Persian mottoes are lined up beside Brazilian, Finnish, Irish and Creole ones, as well as numerous examples from different African regions and groupings. Schipper stoutly defends her method: ‘Mutual knowledge is an important key to peaceful ...”

“... A number of journalists have mastered the intricacies of the Belgrano affair. Julian Haviland, Anthony Bevins and Philip Webster of the Times would all pass with first-class honours any finals examination in Belgrano Studies: but as members of the House of Commons Lobby, they necessarily have to give their attention to every ephemeral political event and ...”

“... place as the British Museum.’ It may also be that Carlyle was piqued that the underbred Italian, Anthony Panizzi, had declined to give him, as he had given Macaulay, a private room to work in at the BM. (Wells rather doubts this small-minded explanation of the origin of his beloved institution.) The London Library is an apt subject for Wells’s affectionate ...”

“... British novelists who went off to the war in mid-career in their mid-thirties, Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, both wrote books about what they had seen at first hand, Waugh’s war being more overtly interesting (the Commandos, Crete, parachute training, Yugoslavia) but Powell’s more typical (garrison duties, staff work, office politics). In ...”

“... uncertainty seemed elemental, and he was more absorbing than Famous Actors like Olivier, Brando or Anthony Quinn. But there hasn’t been a book, a Life to hold on to, a place to bring questions – and worries. Now, all at once, there are two of them, and I must warn you, you need both.There have been books before, some of them opportunist, some earnest and ...”

“... Amis has been encased in an obese 995 pages from Zachary Leader.Hilary Spurling’s Life of Anthony Powell breaks with this pattern. The longest-lived of all significant novelists of the last century, his 94 years are covered in fewer than 450 pages of text. In part, that’s because she confines the final quarter of his life to the briefest of ...”

“... Anthony Trollope once proposed to write ‘a history of English prose fiction’, but ‘broke down in the task, because I could not endure the labour in addition to the other labours of my life’ – for ‘it would be necessary to read an infinity of novels.’ Such a wholesale reading of fiction takes on for many of us, as for Trollope, ‘a terrible aspect ...”