“... the inhibition against gentleness – or the ‘taboo on tenderness’, as the psychiatrist Ian Suttie called it. There are much ‘naughtier’ words on the blackboard, but it is the naming of the female breast that causes the boy difficulty, presumably because it recalls him to the most intimate and dependent relationship he has ever been in, and from ...”

“... but he still managed to get the infamous Section 31 passed, the Republic’s prefiguring of Britain’s broadcasting ban. (Section 31 was allowed to lapse earlier this year.) This is not a liberal man. His present pessimism is, one suspects, the disillusionment of someone whose self-promoted wisdom is foolishly no longer heeded by those in charge. The ...”

“... Shell Haven, which will be the largest in Europe. But who cares about the most derided county in Britain, except those in the stockade? Most visitors to Essex are only passing through, heading for somewhere else. You can see that from the way the roads have been arranged. The M11 makes its way towards Cambridge, shortening the journey to desirable north ...”

“... misspells the heroine’s name.Waugh has been called ‘the most influential reviewer of novels in Britain today’. That was when he did a weekly star-turn in the Evening Standard. Now he does it in the Mail, and nothing has changed. John Osborne at present occupies the New Standard spot. Nothing has changed there either. Osborne promises to be almost as ...”

“... were more important than others. Bevan is practically alone among serious left-wing figures in Britain for being remembered not as a heroic failure but for creating an enduring institution. He resisted joining the many left-of-Labour organisations available. Unlike his friend Arthur Horner, he didn’t become a communist; he didn’t follow Mosley, for ...”

“... Thatcher, or the bombs that killed two of her closest parliamentary aides, Airey Neave and Ian Gow, provoked momentary outrage, as did those that killed guardsmen and their horses in the royal parks. A missile fired from a truck and narrowly missing John Major’s cabinet in Downing Street was met with astonishment as much as alarm. The IRA had come to ...”

“... they yobs. The volume reprints a moving, excruciatingly honest piece by the distinctly unladdish Ian McEwan about his working-class mother, which only a writer of McEwan’s emotional stringency could have saved from being sentimental. As a woman who ‘never owned the language she spoke’, she communicated this verbal wariness or unsureness of touch to her ...”

“... press. A handsome woman of robust views dedicated to putting the ‘great’ back into Great Britain, she was made to bask in the Sun. Time, and the erosion brought by inevitable error, has dimmed the lustre of those early years – but not, it appears, for foreigners. Margaret is still America’s favourite prime minister. Count Paolo Filo della Torre ...”

“... off a legion of spies and subversives, all would be lost. It also helps to nourish the illusion of Britain as a great power, with priceless secrets to be stolen. Writing books about secret-stealers is an easier way than most of earning a living; it benefits from the vogue of spy films and novelettes, symptom of an uneasy society in need of the reassurance of ...”

“... can be said in a whisper. The first page of The Buried Giant locates the story both in historical Britain and outside it, with the roads left by the Romans ‘broken or overgrown, often fading into wilderness’, and the prevalence of icy fog disguising the occasional approach of ‘the ogres that were then still native to this land’. King Arthur is ...”

“... the conventional reading of medical goals and achievements – and most of the points discussed by Ian Kennedy in the 1981 Reith Lectures have been raised before. Nevertheless, his legal approach is novel, and the lectures themselves were well-organised and delivered with remarkable force and clarity. Whatever their reservations about the conclusions, many ...”

“... with us, above all the hymns of the Victorian and what one might call the long Edwardian age. Ian Bradley’s study is fascinating, once past a misguided Introduction, which develops a long comparison between Victorian hymns and modern soap-operas that seems to embarrass Bradley himself halfway through. He is a mine of information not only on the ...”

“... got Theo. The heart stands still.’ It was, and remains, a shocking and horrible moment. Ian Buruma was born in The Hague in 1951, close to where Van Gogh grew up, and emigrated from the Netherlands in 1975, moving on to spend time in Japan and the East, as well as in the US and Britain. He is the sort of ...”

“... had never heard of the man the Russians referred to as ‘Relli’, but he asked Ernest Boyce, Britain’s spy chief in Moscow, who told him that Sidney Reilly had been recently recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service. Lockhart and Reilly met soon afterwards, and Lockhart later described the encounter in his memoirs: ‘Although he was years older ...”

“... from 1970 onwards, together with a short introduction. It is the story of the decline and fall of Ian Smith and, although one might have wished that Meredith had stayed the course until the 1980 election and its aftermath, there is no doubt that what he has provided is most welcome as a background to present events. The way the persistent rivalries between ...”