“... It does not show the Falkland/Malvinas islands. The problems of television during this crisis can be referred to familiar frames: the issues of control and independence; of the quality of reporting; of access and balance in discussion. All are important, but underlying them are some more difficult questions: latent for many years but made very sharp and ...”

“... an element in much deeper conflicts involving allegiance, ideology and group identity, exacerbated by the existence of oil and strategic assets which keep the super-powers waiting anxiously on the side-lines, hesitating to intervene directly, yet too opportunistic, or unsure of their interests, to blow the final whistle. The emergence of Israel as a monopolist ...”

“... Lord Redcliffe-Maud is, indubitably, a nice man, he would not hurt a fly or, if he did, it would be clear to everybody that it was for the best of motives. Lest I should be thought to be claiming to draw a portrait from the live model, instead of merely giving an informed opinion, such ...”

“... curious, aberrant occupation which the writer above all needs to explain to himself. One might be able to write oneself into a new way of life, more amusing than the old: in this sense (which is Anita Brookner’s sense) writing is a penance for not being lucky in love but also a way of being livelier than life. Words also preserve memory ‘which would ...”

“... and dutifully slaps her to life. He is a man of duty, thus described: ‘The system of forethought by which he lived made sure that on the next watch, or by the morning after, he would find all necessary items for life and duty laid out in perfect navy order. Such drill, when working with a thoroughness too ordinary for him ...”

“... years ago in Russia and nearly two hundred years ago in France. It is a point made forcefully by Andrzej Wajda’s latest film, which depicts the struggle between Danton and Robespierre – between humanist and puritan, pragmatist and idealist. Wajda intended it as an allegory on the present-day state of Poland. But his message is painted on a broader ...”

“... account of his 43 apprentice years – dissident, drifting, bohemian years, marked by a lack of will-power, what the Greeks called aboulia. His title, The Missing Will, refers not only to his aboulia but also to an agreeable fantasy of his mother’s: she was an almost illiterate but very pretty Yorkshirewoman, called Bertha Wharton, who had ...”

“... with a few of his own remarks. He challenges you to prove relevance and competence. He wanted to be ‘illustrious and unknown’, and wrong-foots biographers by making their curiosity seem prurient or irrelevant. He thought most writing about art ignorant and unnecessary: ‘I have spoken to the most intelligent people ...”

“... It is often late, by chance, and with sudden delight, that we find those poets who later become vital to us. I knew Sorley MacLean by reputation before I felt his authority. His renovation of a poetic tradition, his cross-fertilisation of love and politics, of metaphysical technique and traditional Gaelic modes, of dan direach and personal destiny – I knew about all this at second-hand; it was part of that store of useful literary information that accumulates at the back of the literary mind like respected, unread books on the bookshelf ...”

“... the epistolary evidence compels a different response. They really were a special breed. ‘It will be Hell to be in it and Hell to be out of it,’ said Rupert Brooke, who sailed cheerfully off with three Coterie chums to the Dardanelles, parading their Classical learning as they passed ...”

“... marshalled. His many insights are highly informative. His few in comprehensions could hardly be more revealing. Mr Carswell names the Assessors who sat with the Robbins Committee and acted as liaison officers with the ministries concerned. He was in the secrets as the Treasury’s Assessor. This book is built round the Robbins Report of 1963 and what ...”

“... life. Most were young and working-class. Many were of Irish origin. Not a single one of them could by any stretch of the imagination be held responsible for or even sympathetic to British government policy in Northern Ireland. The universal horror at this, the biggest killing of civilians in British post-war history, was to ...”

“... 1949 Michael Perrin, one of the heads of the British Atomic Energy Programme, was woken up by an urgent telephone call asking him to come to the communications room at the US Embassy in London. There his opposite number in the Pentagon asked that an RAF plane be sent to the upper atmosphere to check radioactivity ...”

“... notices in occupied Germany warned ‘No Fraternisation’ and each soldier had a booklet, signed by the field-marshal, reminding him why the Master Race was beyond the pale, incapable as it was of ‘any form of decency, or of honourable dealings’. Yet by June 1945 we were printing Monty’s first relaxation of the ...”

“... can’t and therefore hate.) A major contributor to this sense of unchartedness was the decision by the ratings agency Standard and Poor’s to downgrade US government debt from AAA to AA+ status. This might seem like a small technical point, and it’s worth noting that the downgrade had no effect on the price of the debt, meaning that the markets felt it ...”