“... coughs and shuffles at the end of a movement. Commentaries on the films of Hitchcock – Zizek’s King Charles’s head, one might say – almost outnumber his analyses of Hegel. In a fine essay on Psycho in Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock), a collection of Hitchcock essays by various hands, he treats us to a ...”

“... at having connived at his father’s arrest for treason in Nahum Tate’s 1681 acting version of King Lear, Regan whispers to him: ‘The Grotto, Sir, within the lower Grove,/Has Privacy to suit a Mourner’s Thought.’ The next scene duly opens on ‘A Grotto’, where we find ‘Edmund and Regan amorously Seated, Listning to Musick’. But ...”

“... the first African-American president, it might be appropriate to have a bust of Dr Martin Luther King in my office to remind me of all the hard work of a lot of people who would somehow allow me to have the privilege of holding this office.’ Afterwards, Rhodes goes out to dinner with Cameron’s team ‘to celebrate a visit that had accomplished everything ...”

“... school for three hundred years, explained that in phrases like Rex et Regina beati, ‘the blessed King and Queen’, the adjective beati is plural (agreeing in number with Rex et Regina) and masculine (agreeing in gender with Rex), because ‘the masculine gender is more worthy than the feminine, and the feminine more worthy than the neuter.’ (In ...”

“... decades after 1945. The first is the dream of the social-democratic equivalent of the philosopher-king. This expresses the hope that even in contemporary mass democracies a figure will emerge who can work the political machine and at the same time embody intellect, sensibility and liberal values, someone who can win power and then exercise it in the name of ...”

“... of settled communities to travelling communities or individuals is still hard-wired into Europe. Anthony Pagden, discussing Diderot’s opinion on this, remarked that his disapproval of travel ‘belongs to an ancient European tradition, one which locates the source of all civility – which is after all a life lived in cities (civitates) – in settled ...”

“... category. Among them are Susan Browne, ‘taken in bed with a Scotsman in a common bawdy house’; Anthony Horne, tailor, ‘locked up in a shed in Chiswell Street with Margery Blague in the night, and apprehended by the constable’; Henry Manne, gentleman, ‘complained to be a very disordered fellow, and keeping company with Alice Sherwood, a common ...”

“... when this year Pontius Pilate is not the only one washing his hands.16 April. A card from Tom King with news of the tattoo of me that he had put on his arm (pictured in the Diary published in the LRB of 3 January 2019): ‘The tattoo remains popular, though bizarrely one person thought it was of Henry Kissinger. It also makes for an amusing conversation ...”

“... to meet – leaders of governments-in-exile, naval commanders, bomber pilots, H.G. Wells, the boy-king of Yugoslavia – was made available. Churchill played host at a country-house weekend. The queen had her to tea at Buckingham Palace. Anthony Eden took her to the movies. Drawbell wasn’t satisfied. In the book he wrote ...”

“... had tried to mediate with Baldwin’s inflexibly disapproving government on behalf of the king. Now George VI was on the throne, and vainly objected when Churchill, on becoming prime minister in May 1940, instantly took Beaverbrook into his cabinet. At the Ministry for Aircraft Production that summer, as the Luftwaffe prepared for its assault on ...”

“... identity is characterised not by imperial nostalgia, as such commentators as Fintan O’Toole and Anthony Barnett have suggested, but by a more inchoate sense of communal ‘loss’. Loss of what? ‘One part of the Englishman’s burden of the three Celtic statelets was to eschew a patriotism that was other than British, or a flag that was other than the ...”

“... physical urges are hard to combat,’ he says. That much is nothing new: Jesus and St Anthony knew it very well. But Atkins’s conclusion is staunchly democratic: ‘Fighting the scale armed only with willpower and determination works, at best, for only five low-fat dieters out of a hundred.’ If, however, we use the best nutritional science, we ...”

“... person in a civilised country’ had at their disposal better stuff than ‘many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages’. Civilisation itself consisted in the miracle of specialisation. Smith was far less interested in what the division of labour looked like in practice. His breezy lists of ...”

“... of Never on Sunday and Psycho, in which, occupying a long floaty number, she prowls up to Anthony Perkins, perching beside him to croon. ‘What’s it about?’ he asks. ‘Like all Greek songs, about love and death,’ she replies. ‘I give you milk and honey and in return you give me poison.’ The museum was deserted. The entrance fee had ...”

“... his stepfather, ‘the Orator writes all the University letters, makes all the Orations, be it to King, Prince, or whatever comes to the University.’ It required great skill as a Latinist and the willingness to apply that skill to the occasion at hand. Herbert hoped it would prove a stepping-stone to a position at court, as it had for the two previous ...”