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“... probably unrivalled by that of any other poet before or since – was neither the dark Childe Harold, nor the sexy Don Juan, but their even darker, even sexier author. The Hellespont-swimming, freedom-fighting, countess-shagging Byron, hurtling around Europe with contrails of scandal streaming in his wake, was a more Byronic character than any he had ...”

“... Into their midst glided a young, clever and passionately idealistic clerk from the Foreign Office, Harold Nicolson, who had left his wife in the arms of others but found consolation in dreams of the glorious emergence of new states in Eastern Europe, ‘which made our hearts sing hymns at heaven’s gate’. As it turned out, the British officials whom ...”

“... Congressional committees down to size, and an opportunity for the zealous historian – Woodrow Wilson – to put his theory into practice as the 28th President of the United States. Wilson’s Presidency was compromised by a world at war and marred by the reach of his own urgent ambition. Still, ...”

“... pygmies compared to the Labour leadership contest that took place the following year. When Harold Wilson resigned as prime minister the candidates lined up to replace him included Jim Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Tony Benn, Anthony Crosland, Michael Foot and Denis Healey. It was, by any historical standards, an impressive cast list. The Parliamentary ...”

“... all this were large – she started living with Rahv, and then, through the magazine, met Edmund Wilson, whom she was to marry – and so were the intellectual consequences. She has not stopped belonging to these circles, or participating in these debates, and has given offence across a creditably wide range of the political spectrum – though it’s worth ...”

“... Lowe does nothing to bring alive the bizarre dramatis personae of Sparrow’s life. Goronwy Rees, Harold Nicolson, Isaiah Berlin, John Betjeman, A.L. Rowse and Maurice Bowra all had highly distinctive manners of speaking and dressing; no hint of this reaches the page. We read from the biography of the author on the jacket that his previous publications ...”

“... to stray into his territory. Indeed, he goes out of his way to say that ‘I did not do a Harold Wilson and publicly criticise Mervyn, even when on further occasions he volunteered advice on our fiscal policy.’ All he will say is that he called him in for a private chat, and reminded him of their understanding ‘that I would not comment on ...”

“... of the book, for Mary McCarthy’s first husband was the actor, scriptwriter and embryo playwright Harold Cooper Johnsrud, with whose activities she was closely concerned before she left Vassar at the time of her marriage. They parted after a few years and Johnsrud died in 1939 of burns received when trying to rescue one of his manuscripts from a fire in his ...”

“... to Reith: ‘One cannot,’ he said, ‘be impartial between the fire and the fire brigade.’ Harold Macmillan is widely credited with being a TV ‘natural’. Mr Cockerell’s account makes him out to be anything but that. Huw Weldon observed after his first broadcast as prime minister that the script ‘could not be spoken by one human being to another ...”

“... Edwardian watch-chain. But the Conservative benches soon learnt not to be deceived. When Harold Macmillan callously cleared out a third of his Cabinet in ‘the night of the long knives’ of July 1962, it was Thorpe who caused the Prime Minister to squirm by gravely rising to his feet and intoning in his deep, splendid, actor’s voice: ‘Greater ...”

“... college.’ She was already (McCarthy, that is) shacking up at weekends with actor and dramatist Harold Johnsrud in New York, a sign of sophistication way beyond most of her socially smarter peers in the class of ’33. (She had ‘no family ... to please’, one of them pointed out thirty years later, when The Group revived the gossip: ‘She appeared to be ...”

“... its own way.’ The second part, at least, of Tolstoy’s celebrated dictum is borne out by Angus Wilson’s fiction, which deals largely in families, and this with a rich diversity through a long series of books. Sir Angus shuffles the cards brilliantly, but Unhappy Families remains the name of the pack. There is a good deal in the present volume about the ...”

“... six and seven amendments per sitting day during the Heath Government. This rose to nine during the Wilson-Callaghan Government, and climbed to 16 a day under Mrs Thatcher. During the final stages of the 1988-89 session their lordships were zipping through an amendment a minute. This is undeniably high productivity – which may have been just what Mrs Thatcher ...”

“... Gollancz started up the Left Book Club. Here were three socialists – Gollancz, John Strachey and Harold Laski – meeting in a restaurant and establishing a publishing venture which would, over ten years, produce and sell six million books, most of them new, and all of them aspiring to a social order where the common interest would prevail. There was at that ...”