“... walk on,’ she wrote breezily in April 1882. Then, more ominously: ‘I could twist him around my little finger, that he would go off and kill somebody if I bade him.’ Poor Ned ambled around Amherst sporting a pussy willow that Mabel had given him in his buttonhole until the ‘fluffy blossom dried and dropped off’. But by the time he declared his love ...”

“... But by refusing to recognise the breakaway the TUC will appear to the public to be siding with Arthur Scargill. A third consequence, flowing from these two, is that the TUC – especially were it to split into rival political centres – will look an unconvincing partner for a Labour government whose expansionary economic policies are premised on a special ...”

“... public buildings must be due To precepts found in no official text, And least of all in Mao’s Little Red Book – Which you can’t buy however hard you look. Yes, Mao has been reduced from god to man. He’s back to being ordinary flesh. His mausoleum’s small extractor fan Must now work overtime to keep him fresh. The Party’s cranking out a whole ...”

“... are producing my Forty Years On. The title of the play within the play is ‘Speak for England, Arthur’ and the schoolboy cast hold up letter-boards to spell it out for the audience. Part of the stage-directions is that before getting it right, one or two of the boys should get their letters jumbled. One of the 18 local schoolboys doing it at the ...”

“... most impressive of the Young Turks to contest MacDonald, lurched into even deeper disgrace, while Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury were simply not memorable. Clement Attlee, the leader for twenty years and the man who led Labour to the new Jerusalem of 1945, was, in the event, the most serviceable hero, but he was never beatified, let alone canonised. Not ...”

“... confide in him that her late husband had a special fondness for a corny musical about King Arthur. But, as a staunch Camelot-scoffer all my life, I was in for a huge shock when Jackie finally died. Every American female I know took it entirely personally. My scoffs were absolutely at a discount. And then I read a memorial interview with that old ...”

“... and to side with the ‘genius of the system’; Stroheim’s reputation has suffered as a result. Arthur Lennig’s new critical biography is not likely to restore it. This is an old-timey book that calls to mind the film societies of another era, the noise of a 16mm projector at the back of the room, the smell of mimeographed programme notes. It tells an ...”

“... Indeed, in many of these accounts, the stance of the daughter seems curiously to be that of a little girl; with one exception, the mother is perceived as distant and hard-working, of marginal importance, perhaps difficult to please. The father and the daughter are allies; the daughter writes with understanding, and with sympathy, of the father’s ...”

“... Bennett, A.C. Benson, Hugh Benson, Laurence Binyon, Robert Bridges, Hall Caine, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Maurice Hewlett, Anthony Hope, W.J. Locke, E.V. Lucas, J.W. Mackail, John Masefield, A.E.W. Mason, Gilbert Murray, Henry Newbolt, Owen Seaman, G.M. Trevelyan, H.G. Wells and Israel Zangwill (...”

“... the Prime Minister?’ enquired Haggard hopefully, eager for Balfour’s reaction. ‘Oh Arthur won’t read it – you know, Arthur won’t read it.’ The Government decided to leave emigration to the existing agencies. Haggard would have been entitled to shake his head at other government approaches, but he ...”

“... pints of bitter. Only one journalist was allowed into this bar, along with his guests. He was Mr Arthur Christiansen, the legendary editor of the Daily Express. To be asked to join him there was the ultimate accolade for an Expressman. The long, narrow bit was reserved for ordinary workaday hacks from both the Express and the Telegraph. But the surprising ...”

“... women start getting their own back. Some of them even begin to turn into reptiles. There is very little sex with violence in Victorian Sculpture. In England the exhibition piece tended to melt the heart rather than race the pulse. If we leave aside the modesty and tenderness of numerous nymphs finely calculated to compensate for unholy ideas prompted by ...”

“... in the land. My father deplored Howard Johnson’s and the House of Pancakes, Jack Paar and Arthur Godfrey, Leon Uris and Herman Wouk. When Dwight Macdonald’s famous essay ‘Masscult and Midcult’ was published in Partisan Review, he was ecstatic, chuckling over Macdonald’s assault on the pretensions of those contemptible middlebrows Thornton ...”

“... prose into a jaunty, surreal bawdiness (‘fancy him, darling?’): the effect is rather like Arthur Balfour voicing Sid James. ‘Enter toge,’ Chapter 1 begins, ‘wheeled slowly in by French and German ladies of vague conditions in life.’ Or: ‘he himself rated success in flesh to include dogs, rain rope, and also a certain condition of Asiatic ...”

“... with titles like Salome Dear, Not in the Fridge! and became a jolly television games-player (yes, Arthur Marshall); another, who served in Intelligence, took to wearing bangles and a large diamond in one ear, and was barred from Wimbledon for designing too-saucy dresses for tennis women (Teddy Tinling); a third, who rose from private in the Honourable ...”