“... shells and fungi, neatly executed, conventionally arranged in the manner of Dali’). And think of Charles Ryder’s decorations at Brideshead: ‘There was another painted room, outside under pillars – modern work but, if you ask me, the prettiest in the place; it was the signal office and they made absolute hay of it; rather a shame.’ So those doubtless ...”

“... list is far from remote. Indeed it is regrettably relevant. It is Political Violence in Ireland by Charles Townshend. I have been singing Townshend’s praises for years past. I think he is the outstanding authority on a subject of vital importance. His new book presents the essential theme in Irish history ever since the European Revolutions of 1848. The ...”

“... remit. In Thomas Dormandy’s sobering litany, St Teresa of Avila, Philip II of Spain, Charles II and Louis XIV were among millions who died in protracted and unnecessary agony: ‘All were surrounded by the best medical talent of their day. None was offered opium to ease their suffering.’ It was the 19th-century revolution in attitudes to pain ...”

“... support the operation. Eventually de Menil’s family intervened, Friedrich resigned in 1985 and Charles Wright, a young lawyer from Seattle, was hired as director. Wright continued the focus on single-artist projects and long-term exhibitions, but he also opened Dia to the art community through new shows, adventurous symposia and ambitious curators (Lynne ...”

“... of the new period into which Negroes appear to be emerging.’ Opportunity’s editor was Charles Johnson, a key figure in the New Negro movement, who thirty years later recalled the Harlem Renaissance as ‘that sudden and altogether phenomenal outburst of emotional expression, unmatched by any comparable period in American or Negro American ...”

“... faced down conservative prejudice to offer work to a Jewish refugee like him. His Yale colleague Charles Hendel was relieved to find that Cassirer was ‘not a prima donna’ (unlike ‘many European professors’), and indeed that he ‘liked his students’ and was working on his spoken English in the hope of better ...”

“... full of runs. In the tradition of General MacArthur, David Gower has announced his return. I hope he succeeds. But success is not the only thing that makes a hero. I have a nagging suspicion – no more than that – that his current popularity has something to do with his having been pulled down a peg. The humbling whiff of failure never goes amiss in ...”

“... such a novel, he felt, it would have to deal with a not-too-distant past, one with which he might hope to make a genuine connection: ‘I delight,’ he once wrote. ‘in a palpable imaginable visitable past.’ But even then, for such a hater of escamotage and cheating, so great a fanatic for ‘the real thing’, the enterprise seemed hopeless. Then he had ...”

“... of De Morgan’s life occupy almost half Mark Hamilton’s book, which has been written in the hope that ‘perhaps the wheel has turned full circle’ and we are ready to appreciate De Morgan again as a writer. Unfortunately this is most unlikely. In any case, the first biography since that of his sister-in-law, A.M.W. Stirling, in 1922, should add more ...”

“... February Revolution and the June Days (1848), the coup d’état of 1851 and the Paris Commune. Charles X appears only as the monarch who made Gros a baron and refused to allow David back from exile. The Siege of Paris in 1870 is merely an aggravation of Edmond Goncourt’s grief at losing his brother. This elimination of historical detail corresponds to ...”

“... the turn of the century can be contained within it: Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Charles Chesnutt, Edith Wharton, Kate Chopin. McElrath and Crisler, however, claim that the naturalist novel has been slighted by scholars in favour of the realist. This was true when they began writing their biography, thirty years ago, but it is not true any ...”

“... of enormous proportions. Huge quantities of factual narrative have been injected into it, in the hope of beguiling reviewers into acknowledging its historical respectability. For all that, the underlying argument is simple – the title gives it away. Britain began to go to the dogs in the period between 1880 and 1914. That was because the ruling classes ...”

“... in the primary source (in this case the archive at Newnham assembled by Jane’s companion Hope Mirrlees) determined all subsequent interpretations. Those who have used it have perpetuated a narrative of Harrison’s career as founded on ‘passionate friendship’, because the archive is itself the product of the passionate friendship of Mirrlees and ...”

“... In Ancien Régime Paris, small, insecure venues offered the majority of women artists their best hope of forging a public presence. A number exhibited at the al fresco Exposition de la Jeunesse, which was held annually in the Place Dauphine, and considered disreputable because it involved women mixing outside in a public space (‘it is murderous to ...”

“... My father was a wicked man – a very wicked man,’ Charles Dickens’s daughter Kate Perugini wrote. ‘My father did not understand women.’ Yet he was never simply a chauvinist. Though he would not acknowledge women’s independence, he recognised their ambitions outside the home. He admired his musical sister Fanny, and was drawn to Nelly Ternan, who became his mistress, partly because of her talents on the stage ...”