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“... the versions disagree. Writing to Dodds to apologise for a one-night stand with a mutual friend, Margaret Gardiner, MacNeice says: ‘If however I had done any celebration, I shouldn’t have imagined that she would suffer over it.’ In place of ‘celebration’ Stallworthy has ‘calculation’, which seems to make more sense. Those hoping for letters ...”

“... priorities on the part of public broadcasters and, according to some, strong pressure from Margaret Thatcher, who was determined to help Rupert Murdoch build up his television empire. Within a few years there was no live cricket left on terrestrial television. Numerous addicts, myself included, were forced to admit defeat, sign the document of ...”

“... and he found favour in many quarters – in apartheid South Africa, for instance, and with Margaret Thatcher, who once spoke of his ‘wise leadership’ – but his influence seemed bleached out by many things, not least the glare of American television, which continued to play in my mind as we reached the dusty roads. Mega-Bite Take Away, said a sign ...”

“... forceful and highly intelligent women, Kane’s weird affair with the famous ‘spirit rapper’ Margaret Fox. This humanising detail makes them, in a subtle way, not less but more heroic. Fallible human beings, sometimes even weak and neurotic, not romantically conceived supermen, lived through those terrible ordeals. Berton’s eye for selected detail also ...”

“... art – ‘this outstanding novel clamours to be heard.’ ‘Essential reading for our time,’ Margaret Atwood proclaimed in a New York Times review of Snow, Pamuk’s grim, Dostoevskian thriller about Islamists and secularists clashing in north-eastern Turkey. (‘Headscarves to Die for’ was the headline.) Pamuk’s ...”

“... interested in whether Simon Raven was related to Canon Charles Raven. The character Jago in C.P. Snow’s novel sequence is said to be based on the late Canon, and I found that my ideas of Jago and the real Canon Raven were almost inextricably mixed: this made me recognise that I would find it impossible to ask James Prior about ‘Peter Morrison MP’ and ...”

“... exacerbating climate change. The first such loop is already operating, as rising temperatures melt snow and ice and expose more open water and bare ground each summer: these darker surfaces reflect 75 per cent less heat away from the planet’s surface and this means further warming, which melts more ice and snow, which ...”

“... epithet. The grandson of Henry VII, the nephew of Henry VIII (his mother was the Tudor Princess Margaret), he began his personal rule by polishing off the enemies of his house, real or imagined, in a burst of destruction, executing or burning to death with enthusiasm. Again, it is impossible to understand the character of Mary Queen of Scots without ...”

“... accumulated behind the demand for constitutional reform disappeared like the springtime melting of snow drifted behind a dyke. The campaign for the Scottish Assembly which would have articulated Scotland’s sense of nationality actually won – but by so slim a margin that the plan itself could be wiped from the Statute Book, with the Scots themselves ...”

“... looking for a metaphor to describe the horse on which Dido rode to greet Aeneas, he decided not on snow or lilies, but on ‘paper-white’. This association with cleanliness may help to explain why it was often invoked in medical recipes. One 15th-century charm to reduce fevers suggested writing nine apotropaic words on a piece of paper and eating a word each ...”

“... me who, girlish and unlearned as I am, presume to write to a man who is the father of learning.’ Margaret Cavendish in her 1656 autobiography calls her own work ‘scribbling’ as opposed to her husband’s ‘writing’. The operations of this cultural cringe are intricate. How much is simply the formulaic politeness of eras more unabashedly hierarchical ...”

“... Now, however, earlier feminist explorations are being rediscovered in the late stories of Margaret Oliphant and the novels of Willa Muir and Catherine Carswell. Young women writers are finding that they have a Scottish tradition behind them as well as imaginative and ideological links to work from elsewhere. Yet at least as striking is the way in ...”

“... living sense of the loved one. She is composed of polished ivory, red coral, alabaster, cherries, snow, diamonds and rubies, none of which thinginess helps bring her into focus. Even Carew, who begins boldly by describing the mole on Celia’s bosom as a bee, is soon enough onto the romantic staples of aromatic dew, ambrosial meat, phoenix fire and Elysian ...”

“... is a reissue of a 1963 version of the 1905 original, with the addition of an admiring preface by Margaret Atwood. A play, Gertrud, was filmed by Carl Dreyer; Doctor Glas has also been filmed; I don’t quite understand why these books and others of his – Martin Birck’s Youth, from 1901, and castigated, on its appearance, for being ...”

“... a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow … a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done.’ Women novelists had come late to English literature, and had no more than a toehold in what was still a male domain. They were second-class citizens – just ...”