“... would seem as mysteriously given as the planet Venus, is guilty of the offence. When A.J.P. Taylor remarked that he had extreme views but held them moderately, he may have meant, as Fish would be bound to claim, that he did not really hold them at all. He was, after all, being interviewed for a Magdalen College fellowship at the time. But he may have ...”

“... one merits Norman Davies’s unqualified approval. It is an arresting retrieval from oblivion. John Lingard’s eight-volume History of England (1819) has been thinly, if ever, read during the last hundred years. But, written by a Catholic priest, it escaped the grip of both nationalism and Protestantism. It gave, uniquely, something like a global ...”

“... met the 19-year-old Lauren Bacall on the set of To Have and Have Not. On and off-screen love, like Taylor and Burton’s, is a PR winner. The film is all the better when one knows that they actually lived somewhat happily ever after. It was both Bogie and Bacall’s biggest and best part. It had taken a while for Bogart to come to terms with acting on ...”

“... he does not call these pieces poems.’ From the heart of the London literary establishment Sir John Squire described The Waste Land as a poem for which ‘a grunt would serve equally well.’ Eliot’s 1925 collection, which included ‘Gerontion’, seemed to Squire ‘obscure so inconsequent . . . Why on earth he bothers to write at all is difficult to ...”

“... was irresistible, but a parliamentary motion to that effect was defeated. What to do next? Helen Taylor refused to allow men to join the council of the London branch of the National Society for Women’s Suffrage. Bodichon resigned from it, thinking that this attitude would delay victory by at least ten years.Her upbringing and wealth had released her from ...”

“... imposed a ban on any music deemed too fast or too slow to comply with the ‘Chechen mentality’. Taylor Swift is a no-no – too fast. The Russian national anthem – too slow. There would seem to be a political subtext here, along the lines of ‘One’s just as bad as the other,’ but let it pass.Where would Arthur Russell fit on the Chechnya ...”

“... Barker Centre with its statue of Winged Time. I had taken the same picture under the bust of John Harvard as I had on my last visit. I had seen William James’s house, had imagined Elif Batuman scampering around campus, gathering material for The Idiot. I had refused, out of pure perversion, to see the Glass Flowers, had gone to visit the Chinese jades ...”

“... as a way of allowing honourable men to stay in office without appearing to want to do so. John Nott offered his resignation after the Falklands invasion but he allowed himself to be persuaded by Mrs Thatcher to stay in office. William Whitelaw has written that he wanted to resign as Home Secretary after an intruder had entered the Queen’s bedroom in ...”

“... of the Royal College of Surgeons. It is sometimes used for teaching, and is open to the public. John Hunter (1728-93), the first person to articulate an elephant’s skeleton, was the younger brother of William Hunter. Both men were pioneering teachers of anatomy. John set up the museum to house his anatomical ...”

“... of his expenses claims. Now he discovers that there is an article by one of his predecessors, John Major, which attacks him in highly personal terms. He decides he must ring the Telegraph’s editor to put the record straight. He has to do this on a train to Bradford, where he is due to unveil a memorial in honour of a local police officer, Sharon ...”

“... out; and because it isn’t just a matter of time before you get it – as is the case, say, with John Ashbery – you can’t get much literary criticism out of a Thomas poem. (Nothing reveals the banality of paraphrase more than a commentary on one of his poems; his best critics – Empson, Lowell, MacNeice – are inclined to say that they don’t know ...”

“... of the war, Joyce had ‘broadcast for the enemy’, and that was enough to finish him. A.J.P. Taylor later remarked that he was hanged for making a false statement on a passport – the usual penalty for which was a small fine. Widespread wireless ownership led to a wartime golden age of radio propaganda. The Nazis were quickest off the mark, but other ...”

“... of his uncle being a farm-labourer, or the blighted life of the intelligent, radical cobbler John Antell who married into the family. Instead, Hardy exaggerates the scale of the Rockhampton cottage where he was born, his father’s status in the social scale (he attributes his comparative lack of success in the building business to his being by nature ...”

“... was fired from MGM, late in 1931, Scott Fitzgerald was having lunch with the screenwriter Dwight Taylor in the company canteen when something, or even two things, more disturbing than his own drunken dreams appeared and sat at his table. The apparition was a pair of Siamese twins. ‘One of them picked up the menu,’ ...”

“... be asked and complaints pursued and (sometimes) compensation obtained without going to law. Arthur Taylor’s useful essay contrasts the reasonably swift and productive hospital complaints procedure with the often complicated and frustrating family health service procedure when the complaint is against a GP. He looks also at the Health Service ombudsman, whose ...”