“... Stuart Little, The Secret Garden, The Borrowers, The Little Prince, Member of the Wedding, Gigi, Lord of the Flies, Return of the Native … This is Willa, the 15-year-old narrator of Early Disorder, looking at her bookshelf and wondering if you are what you read. Notice that there are children’s books and adult books, and nothing in between. Nothing, in ...”

“... Bonham Carter, who ‘as it happens’ is a cousin of Glenconner’s late husband, Colin Tennant (Lord Glenconner), coming for tea and taking copious notes. It was at this moment, as she tried to recall useful details such as the princess’s smoking style (‘rather like a Chinese tea ceremony’) that she began to consider writing about her own life. She is ...”

“... ten, was a college tutor. In due course the boys went away to public school, while I was taught at home by my mother, generally alongside one or two other children of Cambridge dons. In that exceptional environment, far from intellectual interests being suppressed, I was driven by her to reading books way beyond the interests and competence appropriate to my ...”

“... misery of his solitary meals. In the middle of reading one such bulletin, I rang the Taylors’ home to take his proof marks. Eva Taylor answered the phone: she was home and she was better. What had hospital been like? ‘Very interesting. But – I had homesickness.’ Had she perhaps kept a diary? ‘Of course.’ And ...”

“... a slow learner and had a serious stammer. Jane was still to be born at the time he lived in her home, but she encountered Wallop at a ball in later life and thought him presentable enough. Nothing this keen-eyed observer of humanity says of him would suggest that she found him in any way odd. She was, however, less impressed by his dim-witted younger ...”

“... hardly a figure of speech. Until the First World War, the event almost invariably took place at home. And until the later decades of the century, Jalland argues, it typically took place in a climate of religious belief that made all the difference not only to the dying but to those left behind.Thanks to the Evangelical revival, a very specific model of how ...”

“... politicians and generals who sent them there and the anti-war protesters who want to bring them home. They search for the NVA, though they almost never see them. And where these marines are, in the Central Highlands, there is not a Vietnamese civilian in sight. No one but North Vietnamese soldiers to fight up there – ‘fucking pros’, as one marine ...”

“... come to Stonehenge.’ I croaked an apology and claimed an imminent, prior appointment with the Lord God Almighty. ‘Oh dear. I am sorry,’ he said. ‘But you would do much better to come to Stonehenge.’This was Empson at 68, shortly after I had got to know him. My initial acquaintance with him was brought about by an overlap of social circles, and, to ...”

“... more recent times, historians have continued to enter reservations. ‘He practised appeasement at home to pursue war abroad’ is a judgment undergraduates are frequently asked to address. Thus Edward has been seen as careless of the rights of the Crown, too little concerned with the maintenance of law and order, too generous in his patronage of nobles, too ...”

“... a crackle and dazzle to it. Fleet Street had no more experienced and mischievous proprietor than Lord Beaverbrook, no more technically gifted editor than Arthur Christiansen, and few more celebrated reporters than the paper’s defence and science correspondent, Chapman Pincher. Out of the Express’s triumvirate of black-glass offices in London, Manchester ...”

“... nothing. I thought about the disgraced Austrian seaman, a minor character who appears briefly in Lord Jim. He loses his temper and, spitting and huffing, cries out in broken English: ‘I vill an Amerigan citizen begome.’ Conrad’s narrator tells us that as he said this, the seaman was ‘fretting and fuming and shuffling his feet as if to free his ankles ...”

“... in Europe. An affair also accounted for Mr Tim Yeo in early 1994. Soon after this resignation, Lord Caithness resigned following the suicide of his wife, which apparently was the result of an affair he had been conducting. In 1993, Michael Mates left the government after disclosures that he had sent gifts and messages of support to the businessman Asil ...”

“... Elsinore, now a bit of Sweden but then a fief in the gift of the Danish Crown. Tycho became its lord in 1576. In return for the island, the income from other holdings and a share of the tolls charged to shipping through the sound, Tycho undertook to make his King, Frederick II, famous throughout Europe as a patron of the sciences. Tycho’s interests ...”

“... Sibil Fox Richardson. Afterwards, Sibil gave Bradley a bag containing a hundred hours’ worth of home movies. They show her at home and in public meetings, on the phone and at work. Sibil is always herself, or rather she is always performing several different selves and yet never not present as an actual person. Bradley ...”

“... around to construct any number of theories, from either point of view. Was it, or was it not, Lord Lucan who murdered the nanny Sandra Rivett? In the 13 years since she was found in the US mailbag at 46 Lower Belgrave Street in London there has been no new evidence. Patrick Marnham’s only novelty is the evidence from Taki, the Spectator ...”