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“... and though the subject failed to catch the attention of George Orwell, it might have been a nice thing if it had, given its place in England’s emotional life at every level and in every class. Orwell was an old Etonian, so he knew all about that, but he also spent a certain amount of time in the vicinity of Wigan Pier, where a succession of drag ...”

“... freedom of register was partly a result of his squirearchical background: he was a descendant of Richard Empson, a loathed minister of Henry VII, and grew up in a manor house in Yorkshire. He read maths and then English in the Cambridge of Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell, but the biggest influence on him was his supervisor, I.A. Richards, who advocated ...”

“... still deny his comedy, which was often self-deprecating. John Carey, who wants all writers to be nice (ideally, as decent as Arnold Bennett), wrote a book about the nastiness of various modern writers called The Intellectuals and the Masses. In it Lawrence is scolded for his ‘fascism’, his ecstasies of annihilation. Carey plucks a sentence from a letter ...”

“... barbarian woman with knowledge of hexes and potions, she ought to be monstrous, other and not very nice, but Apollonius makes her sympathetic, a victim more than a victimiser, who gradually comes to terms with the fact that she is being used and hardens her heart accordingly. The object of her affections is unworthy of them, a rather ordinary man eclipsed by a ...”

“... Sun, which hadn’t even been under investigation. Among the first officials to be arrested were Richard Trunkfield, a prison officer who had sold details about James Bulger’s killer Jon Venables; Alan Tierney, a Surrey police constable who was paid £1250 for passing information that John Terry’s mother had been cautioned for shoplifting, and Ronnie ...”

“... fall’, and she was not alone in finding in him an innocence of the world that lay about him.As Richard Holmes’s 1974 biography showed with such intelligence and affection, Shelley was fully aware of his reputation for being away with the fairies and became brilliantly adept at playing along with it, often to seductive effect; but it wasn’t just an ...”

“... She sent her stories out on a Tuesday and received her rejections by Friday for years, until Richard Crossman, who had become editor of the New Statesman in 1970 after six years in Harold Wilson’s cabinet, liked one of them enough to buy several in 1972. With her first cheque for writing, she bought the children sausages and chips for dinner, like the ...”

“... and the occasional nuclear missile silo, part of Frazier’s territory is already familiar as Richard Ford country, the featureless far horizon behind the plangent, spacy tales collected in Rock Springs. Frazier’s deadpan wit is often very nice. Here he speculates on the now-abandoned anti-ballistic missile system ...”

“... got tired of the nastiness of his earlier characters, and decided he needed to hang out with some nice people for a while. The trouble is that we miss the nasty ones. The mode of the writing is mundane realism, applied to notionally deviant conditions, sexual and somatic. This sounds like a good idea, but it produces writing like this: ‘Later that week he ...”

“... totally eclipsed by Cagney and co as gangster films hit their stride. Of a child-star called Baby Richard Headrick: dunked in a fountain thirty times in an afternoon, shivering and fighting back tears, and with his father standing guard. Schulberg’s detached yet sympathetic gaze seems to have been sharply focused almost since birth, and behind many episodes ...”

“... sexual display. Women occasionally took a more active part in chivalry’s rituals: Dr Keen has a nice story of the ‘vamping’ of the Black Prince by Joan of Kent and he emphasises that Lancelot was instructed in the mysteries of knighthood by the Lady of the Lake: ‘a great lady of regal family and endowed with magical powers, but not a priest’. The ...”

“... and park of circa 1700 in which we overhear a scene from Pamela, and then becomes a painting by Richard Wilson with figures from Peregrine Pickle. Thereafter we are led through Gainsborough’s Forest with a guest appearance by Sterne, Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, a John Martin and a Turner, with snatches of poems by Wordsworth and ...”

“... constrain the individual: history, imperial grandeur, Classicism, high culture – even villages. (Richard Hofstadter once explained how the ceaseless lure of land inhibited the growth of village settlements and led to the habit of continually pulling up stakes.) Repeatedly, in diaries, journals, letters, ‘official’ histories, promotional tracts and works ...”

“... gal pal’ takes him by the bespoke elbow and murmurs: ‘This place is kinda nice – English.’ George is holding a copy of that morning’s Los Angeles Times, which reports details of the Rodney King trial. Now for all I know, George is so devoted to South Central LA that he holds a weekly acting workshop in Lynwood, but if he’s ...”

“... side of Hitler that Bayreuth brings out. Here, he was the charming art lover, the family’s nice uncle, the financial saviour of the festival, and the patron of a long overdue modernisation who aroused genuine enthusiasm among the Bayreuth artists and public alike.’ Fairness here seems to amount to advocacy, or at least to exculpation. Hamann herself ...”