“... 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 ...”

“... politics of 18th-century Protestant Dissent – the very spearhead of English radicalism – since Anthony Lincoln’s monograph in 1958. But if British historians are more irreligious than their American counterparts, they are at least less whiggish. Too many American historians look too simplistically at the English Civil War/Revolution for pointers towards ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Crow met John Bull. The British Cabinet groaned at the prospect of an invasion of black troops. Anthony Eden wanted them sent elsewhere and claimed they would be unable to withstand the British weather. It was important not to upset America, but equally important not to go along with American ideas of ‘JimCrow’ segregation. Lord Simon rashly boasted ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... was new in Look Back in Anger, as well as its new style in indignation. At the same time, in the West End, the curtain was still going up on Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables. As soon as they saw the first act of Osborne’s play, the audience at the Royal Court suddenly and spontaneously knew that Rattigan’s already famous piece was ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Anthony Lambrianou, the self-confessed author of Inside the Firm: The Untold Story of the Krays’ Reign of Terror, admits that Ronnie Kray did shock him. Just once. An unforgettable occasion. A motor eased alongside Tony at the corner of Blythe Street, Bethnal Green. Ron and Reg were inside, keeping company with a known associate, Dickie Morgan ...”