“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... not sensitive, but those who write on it often have good cause to be, and prefer to blush unread. Anthony Blunt was quoted in his Times obituary (28 March 1983) as saying that he acted during the war ‘from a conviction that we were not doing enough to help a hard pressed ally’. It is a political if not mathematical certainty that the same men who were ...”

“... met him. He has killed her erstwhile pimp (Gary Oldman being allowed to overact as if he was the Anthony Hopkins of the underworld) because he didn’t like the idea of the man’s continued existence, and because it’s what he thinks Elvis would have done. When Slater tells Arquette he has killed Oldman, she starts to cry, and Slater gets upset. Is she ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... I left the village where I’d spent the night, the village where, in the ninth century, a famous king had beaten the army of a northern warlord. I climbed a steep path to a high plateau and walked along dusty tracks. There was gunfire in the distance. In the early afternoon I rested on a hilltop, on the ramparts of ancient fortifications whose shape was ...”

“... father wears ‘a white drill suit and a helmet with a nipple at the top’. In Henderson the Rain King, Henderson has a ‘helmet with its nipple at the top’. In Seize the day, Mr Rappaport’s ear cartilage is ‘twisted like a cabbage heart’, while in Humboldt’s Gift a Pole called Casey has ears that are ‘amazingly crinkled, like Chinese ...”

“... May. Finish reading A Pacifist’s War by Frances Partridge and start reading Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor, both books covering the same period though from different angles, foxholes at Ham Spray and foxholes at Stalingrad hardly the same. Stalingrad is unsurprisingly a bestseller, the course of the conflict making it compulsive reading and almost ...”