“... speech; all three, moreover, attend to the age-old enigma of whether betrayal of a pledge can ever be justified, and if so, in what circumstances. One of them, Miss Keays’s book, can be briefly disposed of. In her case the betrayal is twofold. First, the betrayal of a lover by the ...”

“... depart before having ‘his revenge – pouring out an incessant flow of reminiscence which might be amusing were it crisp and to the point but every sentence is expanded and every trifling incident magnified, until dear good Austen begins to rank as a first-class bore – he is so insistent as to be a positive ...”

“... power of these interests, notably the big corporations, was controlled, it was argued, not so much by government as by the ‘jockeying’ of all the other interests. Government is always there, of course, to check any excess: but those who suggested any extension of government over the great corporations were ushering in a ...”

“... the Clapham Road – hence, I suppose, the locking and timing devices. No doubt there’s much to be said, and not all of it simply wishful, about working-class energies, the fruitful mixing of cultures, the melding of black and white. What strikes the visiting eye is the squalor and the distress. Flying to London from New Zealand, you spend 24 hours in the ...”

“... women are in their beds, I have been perusing Argentina: The Malvinas and the End of Military Rule by Alejandro Dabat and Luis Lorenzano.* The authors are Argentine Marxists living and working in Mexico. I shall be interested to see whether the reviewer for the London Review of Books judges the work to ...”

“... When future historians come to write about the 1983 General Election, these two books will be essential reading. One is a thorough compilation of the evidence, and the other a brilliant line drawing of a maverick who streaked dramatically across the scene causing all heads to turn and significantly affecting the outcome ...”

“... as the last haven of free choice in an increasingly bureaucratised society, an ultimate redoubt to be defended at all costs against the assault of the social sciences. ‘The secrecy of the ballot, the pencilled cross in the secluded polling booth’, was, he said, ‘the great eleusinian mystery of the democratic state. It must ...”

“... This is a collection of essays by one of our best literary critics, in fact exactly the kind of thing one would expect from him; it simply continues the good work in the manner of his last two books. Why, then, do the reviewers shy like frightened cab-horses? Because Professor Lodge not only includes about seventy-five pages of ‘structuralism’, but actually uses the word in his title, and suggests that it is possible for an English professor to get along with it ...”

“... of the ‘radical right’. The events of October and early November 1956 in Hungary do not, by common consent of the historians who have looked at them, provide a clear case for saying that this was an uprising or a reform movement, or for offering any other single definition. They do not compare easily with the Prague Spring, or even the Polish ...”

“... ourselves why the subject recurs like this? What is the actual policy in Britain? And what could be done? The civil defence cycle is principally an American phenomenon. It is part and parcel of the struggle between those who are moderate and those who are extremist over the conduct of nuclear deterrence and the arms race. The extremist position is that for ...”

“... ancient ‘quantity theory of money’ which, two centuries after it was so elegantly spelt out by David Hume and a century after it was translated into snappy but empty symbols – MV = PT – by Irving Fisher, is still the basis of so much analysis of inflation. As Sir Ian says, ‘old doctrines never die: in ...”

“... Lawrence was attracted to Arabia by what he called ‘the Arab gospel of bareness’, as well as by his desire to play the Middle East version of the Great Game. The present generation of adventurers are simply there for the money. The doctors and nurses, teachers and businessmen, truck-drivers and skilled workers who flock to ‘Saudi’ in search of markets or higher incomes would be the last people to dress up in Arab costume or to subject themselves to the austere rules of the desert ...”

“... it is the American method of teaching history, and not least their own history, coupled with the by no means uncommon requirement that students purchase copies of designated books, that has generated such an enormous demand for the general text, a demand which American historians and publishers alike have long been eager to satisfy. This is a perfectly ...”

“... cities and villages during the Dirty War in search of anyone answering to the definition offered by General Jorge Rafael Videla: ‘A terrorist is not just someone with a gun or a bomb but also someone who spreads ideas that are contrary to Western and Christian civilisation.’ The dictatorial regimes led successively ...”

“... the Royal Court re Kafka’s Dick, now put off until September. Their next play is an adaptation by Howard Barker of Women beware women, and the production after that The Normal Heart, an American play about Aids. This is referred to at the theatre as ‘Men beware men’. New York, 14 February. Lunch with S. at the Harvard Club. Grander (or certainly ...”