“... accusation of academic complacency. ‘Lightning, Phoenix, Arizona’ has the abrupt menace of a David Lynch dream sequence, the cardiac arrest when a previously straightforward narrative crosses the line and touches a vertiginous post-mortem truth. We need to be reminded of the ugly, petrol-breathed, epidermic floss sulking past our own windows. These ...”

“... Patience Strong; ‘John’ Radclyffe Hall, but not Jan Morris; Julia Kristeva, but not Elizabeth David (nor Jane Grigson, nor even Mrs Beeton – writing about cooking does not rate high). Betty Friedan gets in, but not Mary Douglas; Hannah Arendt, but not Barbara Wootton. In general, journalists get a raw deal. There is no entry on Katharine ...”

“... with its consequence, ‘the appalling popularity of music’, are critical gestures which may well endear him to us today. Motion is reliable in his distribution of emphasis over the small corpus of Lambert’s compositions, even if short on original insights. One of his apparently striking illuminations – Constant’s ‘habit of writing in a way ...”

“... have their basis, after all, in a rich and resonant cultural background. ‘Suli-man-Son-of-David (upon Whom be Peace)’ is a recurring invocation – and for what reason, precisely, has he been naturalised among the Afghans? A reference to ‘Iskander the Great’ is easily decoded by those who know their Kipling – but how can we avoid wishing to ...”

“... to advantage’ in The Belle’s Stratagem, it seems that her acting and way with the words may have been less pleasing. There were some who attributed her subsequent lack of advancement in London to her Irish brogue. ‘Miss Smithson improves nightly,’ patronised Bell’s Weekly Messenger, ‘and is rapidly losing that drawl, which we presume she ...”

“... a very long day to egress on foot: if you leave at around 7 a.m., and are reasonably fit, you may find yourself in open fields late that evening. Following Connolly, what this says about London I’m not absolutely sure: all I do know is that after doing a couple of these radial walks – first northeast, then due south – I was altogether more grounded ...”

“... He then turns to Raphael Samuel’s interviews in Stevenage in 1959-60 and John Goldthorpe and David Lockwood’s surveys in Cambridge and Luton in the early 1960s to trace the way migration to the ‘new towns’ and rising prosperity affected those attitudes. Next he mines the questionnaires gathered by researchers working with Richard Brown on Tyneside ...”

“... Volokhonsky’s 1990 translation – the translation of the notes is by Edward Wasiolek. In David McDuff’s 1993 version we read: ‘The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere.’ And again, in Constance Garnett’s much ...”

“... A Transparent Novel (2004) touches on similar questions. It’s about another public performance, David Blaine’s 44 days living without food in a Perspex box suspended over the Thames. One girl is convinced that the box is made of glucose: ‘When he thinks nobody’s looking, can’t you see the bastard licking?’ Other onlookers call him ‘a fake, a ...”

“... but I’m mainly bewildered by how much they care. The biggest constraint on my son’s prospects may be that, as a tennis parent, I don’t have what it takes.When Roger Federer was eight, his parents moved him to a new club, Old Boys Basel, which had the best juniors programme in the city. ‘You could tell he had some talent,’ the head coach, Madeleine ...”

“... chosen by Ted Sorensen to be The Prince of the Kennedy Administration, is mocked, and James David Barber’s typology of Presidential Character put down. Yet Wills has no theory of leadership to put in their place or to challenge James MacGregor Burns’s subtle, historically-embedded account in his recent Leadership. For Wills, Burns belongs among the ...”

“... they are playing, it is not clear what they are doing here, along with such as Dugald Stewart, David Ricardo, the Mills, E.A. Freeman, Alfred Marshall and Graham Wallas. Are these the First Eleven, or just the first eleven names that cropped up? When the Whigs were in charge, at least we used to have an identifiable team of All Stars, whom the fans either ...”

“... too – by exploiting the advantage of its being in the ivy league without the ivy. The LSE may not fulfil the intentions of its initial Fabian benefactor, but there is still a real sense in which it is the institution Sidney Webb created. His thinking obviously was that socialism on the Fabian model held the future in its bones. As disinterested ...”

“... most dangerous room’ while in ‘A Nocturnal Breakfast’ he announces: ‘I think this may be/The last ever breakfast.’ The vein of comic surrealism which this exploits is, at times, similar to Monty Python. Like the best of Python, Woodward’s poems can be eerily and blackly humorous: like the worst of Python they can be fey and palely ...”

“... Williams’s five boys. In April 1994 Maxine had left the family home she shared with her husband David Handley in Newark Knok, and taken the kids to live at the house of her boyfriend Alex Joseph, at Lobelia Close in Beckton. Daniel went to Beckton Cross primary school, and was one of those kids who’d talk to anyone. He already had girlfriends, and was one ...”