“... a ‘studio event’ implying for her a piece of improvised theatre. Quasi-theatrical events took place in Rembrandt’s studio and he is said to have urged his pupils to perform roles in order to devise poses. One may also feel that there is something ‘stagey’ about some of his early self-portraits and about some of his early action-filled paintings ...”

“... was harbouring any wider vision of more far-reaching social revolution’. If any such revolution took place, as a result of the war, it was on the whole superficial. Arthur Marwick’s ‘Images of the Working Class since 1930’ may suggest some explanations. One source he draws on is the post-1945 cinema, which dropped much of the ‘discretion and ...”

“... of the lack is that Gulliver was forbidden by the Emperor of Blefuscu to bring any away, though he took with him some tiny sheep and cattle, which he was able to show to ‘many Persons of Quality’ for ‘a considerable Profit’, as well as to sell and breed successfully in England. That these were therefore ‘seen’ is part of the authenticating tease ...”

“... the technique. Shepard even got to work on his own name. Junked the family name of Rogers and took his second name of Shepard in its place. Samuel Rogers became Sam Shepard. It’s important to understand that what Shepard was renaming was his own existence. He wasn’t coming up with a fancy nom de plume. Seven years after his first theatrical success in ...”

“... in 1928 (his study of 18th-century Munster appeared under that title), inhabited by people who took a very poor view indeed of the new English-speaking aristocracy that had ousted the old Irish-speaking one. ‘Valentine Brown’, as these purists saw it, was the sort of ludicrous name an arriviste landowner might call himself – someone who’d installed ...”

“... As promising future material for Harvard admission, they were worth taking care of. People Express took me to Newark, and on Sunday 1 June, the first day of the reunion, I caught the 7.40 a.m. ‘Benjamin Franklin’ train from Trenton, NJ, to Boston. This gave me a good six hours to read and reflect on ‘the big red book’, our Class Report. In the previous ...”

“... Valeri was blackballed and had to be replaced by an angry Vatican with Mgr Roncalli (later John XXIII). In return Pius XII insisted that the French Catholic hierarchy remain unchallenged. This was clearly impossible: opinion polls showed that a better than eight-to-one majority wanted the collaborationist bishops punished. (Some of them had already had ...”

“... of European democracy. Not only the British themselves, but their Continental neighbours, took it for granted that the secret of ordered freedom had been learned more successfully here than anywhere else, and that that secret had been encapsulated in the British version of parliamentary government. Today, it is clear to all but a handful of law ...”

“... conclusions. They are curiously incurious about facts, and even about explanations. Priestley took a Blue Guide and Stamp and Beaver’s Economic Survey with him, but made little use of them. Bainbridge set off with the Sunday papers. These novelists make comments which only need to have ‘Beryl mused’ or ‘Jack protested’ tacked on here and there ...”

“... a few eccentrics such as Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty. Theocratic failure and national defeat took place before the first signs of intellectual innovation. The most interesting 17th-century forerunner of the 18th-century efflorescence is Stair, whose Institutions captivate by their simple and lucid style: at the same time, by infusing system and theory ...”

“... right to the end. The end came on 19 July 1979 when the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional took over the government of Nicaragua. The class struggle nonetheless continues – but where? Obviously, in military clashes with the counter-revolutionary and Honduran forces trained and financed by the US Government. But what of the internal front? In the ...”

“... and then, without bothering to consult the operational War Diaries, proceeds to spin out the John Connell-Correlli Barnett myth that Montgomery’s only contribution to the Desert arena was an incomprehensible uplift in morale. Monty’s plan for the defence of Alam Halfa, he declares, was inherited from Auchinleck: he neglects to mention that ...”

“... of his family. With the father soon arrested and executed (hence the lad’s nickname, ‘They took him’), the mother goes off with a knife-grinder, leaving JLP to be brought up by his grandmother and to turn into a juvenile delinquent. His pilferings and tricks lead to an encounter with a peasant landowner, Master Sestier, through whose local influence ...”

“... we know little about Blunt’s inner torments, if any). Burgess, Maclean and Philby all took to drink in the most satisfactorily Victorian way, Maclean driven to the verge of madness by Presbyterian guilt. As for Marx, he was ‘inhuman’ and wrote ‘turgid tomes’; even Donald Maclean’s book British Foreign Policy after Suez, written after his ...”

“... to lodge a protest with the school, so sure was she that Joe was better at everything. The key to John Kennedy’s character lay essentially in acute maternal deprivation – and in the contrast between his cold, prudish mother and his overwhelming, earthy father. His mother could not bear to kiss or even touch her children (except to beat them), left them ...”