“... by, among others, Ernie Bevin, as a dangerous nest of Communists intent on the subversion of the Morris Motor works, Oxford University and much else besides. The University, startled at finding itself accused – by a Labour government, at that – of harbouring leftists, cracked down hard, and the Delegacy was ruthlessly purged. Williams must have been near ...”

“... television documentary about people living in the demi-monde of welfare payment dependency) or Barry Cryer at Eighty (an ‘all-star gala thrown to honour comedy writer and performer Barry Cryer’, aired on Radio 4 on Wednesday, 2 December 2015). I don’t suppose my students would get this most cryptic of the ...”

“... of silence. I was recently struck by this relationship of music to silence when I saw the Mark Morris Dance Group perform ‘Neue Liebeslieder Walzer’ to the music of Brahms. At the end of the work, when the dance has subsided into a circular tableau of figures sleeping in the shadows, at the precise moment when the sound of the last note is about to ...”

“... English Literary Happy Family’, as I hope neither do I.21 March. Reading a book about William Morris and Kelmscott, I come across a reminiscence by Philip Webb, who remarked to W.R. Lethaby: ‘The best of those times was that there was no covetousness; all went into the common stock … and then we were all such boys.’ This is how I remember my early ...”

“... Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, ‘there are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ – on Capitol Hill – ‘who happen to be Jewish, who are willing … to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness … These are all guys ...”