“... of poetry is that which doesn’t own up to its politics (e.g. Larkin); and therefore that the best will proclaim its politics with pride. (The manoeuvre will be familiar to readers of contemporary literary theory.) This is clearly an inadequate conception of both literature and politics, because there can be no pristine state which poetry inhabits before ...”

“... oneself ... that one is at any rate a decent imitation of a soldier.’ Edward Brittain’s friend Geoffrey Thurlow, who described himself as ‘disgustingly windy’ and ‘no earthly use as an officer’, continued to rely on Rupert Brooke and ended his last letter to Vera in April 1917 by quoting him and saying that he would ‘like to do well for the ...”

“... 1997. To St Paul’s for the memorial service for Lord Chief Justice Peter Taylor. The first and best address is given by Humphrey Potts, a lifelong friend of Peter’s from their time together at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle and now himself Hon. Mr Justice Potts of the Queen’s Bench Division. It’s not long after Derry Irvine has made a speech ...”

“... delinquency might be thought of as his final triumph: ‘More immediately, his career can perhaps best be explained by the fatal conjunction in him of his own outstanding gifts and his desire to be at once part of the establishment and against it; or, as an acquaintance put it, “The real trouble with Anthony was that he wanted both to run with the hare and ...”

“... to assemble a qualified group to follow with it. Nonetheless, even with skeletal support Finch and Geoffrey Bruce went faster and got higher than anyone else, higher indeed than anyone had ever climbed before. Thanks to oxygen they did so relatively comfortably. In 1924, Mallory came back with oxygen and a climbing partner, Sandy Irvine, who knew how it worked ...”

“... 1930 her will replaced Marsh with four men she liked better). The most active of the new trustees, Geoffrey Keynes, brother of Maynard (‘the iron copulating-machine’ whose exploits are much discussed by Brooke and Strachey), was distressed at the idea that people might think Brooke was gay because Marsh, as Keynes put it, had ‘lived in a sexual ...”

“... Esquire for April featuring ‘The Hitler Formula: Out of the Ashes of World War Two and onto the Best-Seller List in 14 Easy Steps’, which in a two-page spread sums up the rules of the genre. Step One: arrange any six of the elements below in a six-inch-by-nine-inch space and red, black and white decor: Nazi flag, eagle, swastika, iron ...”

“... sociology. With unerring instincts and a fellowship to the United States, Runciman sought out the best empirical sociologists of his day, while simultaneously writing a dissertation on Platonism to secure a research fellowship at Cambridge. Here is encouragement for any graduate student forced into a diversionary path towards his ultimate goal. Here also is ...”

“... a Royal tryst – is sucked into a nightmare vision of a society spinning out of control, or at best, sinking into a state of supine decadence. Take the cricket tour in India and Sri Lanka: a disaster which spilled over from the sporting pages to those normally reserved for political editorials. Gooch’s failure, it seemed, was yet another indication of ...”

“... work of adult fiction’. It rather comes at the reader from all directions. The author is best-known as an English poet, the narrative is set in Wales with a strong folkloric element, and its publication is subsidised by the Scottish Arts Council. Nor is Flying to Nowhere easy to categorise. Short (82 uncrammed pages of text), it cannot comfortably be ...”

“... Sun newspaper’, to say nothing of our joining the Common Market. It is no coincidence that the best political styles belong to Enoch Powell, Anthony Wedgwood-Benn and Michael Foot, all men ‘committed to working on and defending the idea of the United Kingdom’. As it happens, Mr Powell himself contributes a piece on ‘The Language of Politics’, in ...”

“... In setting out the cultural background to the tumultuous events of the mid-15th century – Geoffrey Hill’s ‘thirty feasts of unction and slaughter’ – Hughes performs a valuable service. His most distinctive contribution to the analysis of Yorkist political culture lies, however, in his attempt to trace the influence of alchemy on Edward’s ...”

“... self-made success, lost grandeur, anti-authoritarian spirit or helpless victimhood) that best confirm the values of the investigator. Trained historians observe, sometimes disdainfully, that such researchers are looking for archival comfort food. The two breeds are more or less prepared to tolerate each other, but there isn’t much traffic between ...”

“... Just one example like the above would alert any half-competent examiner. It certainly shocked Geoffrey Hunt and Anne Maclean, two lecturers in philosophy at the University College of Swansea, when they first read the dissertation in 1989. They reckoned that half of it had been copied out of books. Yet, they discovered to their horror, the lucky student ...”

“... are still necessary: despite the work of anti-Establishment novelists in the Thirties, like Geoffrey Trease and Alfred Duggan, there is still a tendency to glorify history, sometimes in the most uncritical way. It seems a dubious practice to suggest to young readers that what is best must necessarily have gone ...”