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“... were born on 13 July 1793, in a thatched tenement on Helpston High Street, next door to the Blue Bell public house. There were two bedrooms and two downstairs rooms: in Clare’s words, his childhood home was ‘as roomy and comfortable as any of our neighbours’. There was an apple tree in the garden, which, Clare says in his autobiography, ‘stood’ his ...”

“... he deplores the neglect of English art, blaming (among others) Roger Fry, who, with Clive Bell, ‘made it just fine to despise new English art in the name of the French avant-garde’: for them ‘any imitation of the Ecole de Paris, however pallid’ was preferable ‘to anything else, however strong’. In another essay, Hughes dwells on Howard ...”

“... simplicity,’ ‘hypocrisy is suggested by the discord between the organ (A major) and the church bell (E flat),’ ‘a series of major triads ... are (of course) Britten’s language for “naturalness”.’ We do not yet have a fully imagined interpretation of Britten’s work, although Carpenter in this extremely readable and well organised survey of the ...”

“... do. But so also do a collection of people whom I’ve never seen before, and in such numbers that David Hyde Pierce, who is presenting it, is practically elbowed out of the way. These turn out to be the backers who, of course, have every reason to be pleased and indeed one of them duly adjusts my tie. I am then bundled out through a back door and across the ...”

“... telephone several times and was pretty confident she could handle it. The bandy, glistening dumb-bell was heavier than she expected. But she had expected the call: she knew who this must be.   ‘Yes?’ said Mary.   A thin voice started calling. Telephones were clearly less efficient instruments of communication than people let on. For instance, you ...”

“... whose offspring will represent the future unity of a now divided nation. Agatha (‘Gatty’) Bell in the first story, Sally Niven in the second, are Lowland women who marry Highland men, though in circumstances which involve the rejection, with fatal consequences, of a third lover, a rejection which risks the success of the union, both marital and ...”

“... to the ancient world, Cyriac drew only the antique components of the building. He ignored the bell tower and other additions that recorded its conversion into a Christian church. Revisiting Athens in 1444, he became the first Latin writer in centuries to call the Acropolis by its proper name. On good days the living ancient world seemed almost within ...”

“... Hemingway marathon, to the fling with James Gavin (hero of the 82nd Airborne), to the affair with David Gurewitsch in Cuernavaca, even the marriage to Tom Matthews in 1954 that made her so ‘plain silly happy’ at first: You see, I have chalked it up too well, and see where and how I am caught – and how tightly. Through ignorance, carelessness, pride and ...”

“... Like Eggers (whose memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, was puffed by Moody), David Foster Wallace and William T. Vollmann, Moody spurns the eye-dropper technique of minimalism that was fashionable when he was a nervous colt in the 1980s in favour of a bachelor-guy pack-rat approach where everything the author has ever seen, read, felt or ...”

“... political upheavals of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015 and the resignation of David Cameron the following summer. (Theresa May initially hoped to refocus on ‘JAMs’ – Just About Managing families – but lost all ideological confidence along with her parliamentary majority in June last year.) The phrase was used as a way of signalling ...”

“... keep the world in balance.All except the hero – a word which always set Le Guin’s inner alarm-bell ringing – a young wizard of immense power called Ged. He made my ten-year-old self think: ‘Surely I could be a wizard.’ Ged shows off to a girl and to his rivals by attempting to bring an ancient beauty back from the dead. This releases from the ...”

“... out to be a Spanish chef capable and indeed only too pleased to produce delicious pre-Elizabeth David food for the ravenous Radletts.13 February. ‘God’s honour’ we used to swear as boys. This remembered in the middle of an acute attack of arthritis pain this morning when I’m marooned on the sofa, cold, thirsty but unable to move. ‘I don’t know ...”

“... they included Brian Worthington, a former pupil of Leavis, and, for a short but inspiring time, David Lambert, a man who spoke about poetry and nature with such passion that it was no surprise when he left Clifton to become a gardener. He later c0-founded the Parks Agency and is now a compelling advocate for Extinction Rebellion.Jefferies taught with a ...”

“... mother made a living by churning out more than a hundred romanzi rosa under the pseudonym ‘Josie Bell’, Meloni took on jobs from babysitting to working behind the bar at the Rome nightclub Piper. She studied languages at a tourism school, setting her up for her assured appearances on the international stage: perfect, impassioned Spanish when giving a ...”

“... the drive outside the doctor’s neat, half-timbered house, which was called Woodlawn, I rang the bell, and was placed in what alternated as waiting-room in the day and family dining-room in the evening and at the weekend. I was alone with the mahogany sideboard, and the Georgian candlesticks, and the pattern-books that were being considered for the ...”