“... naturally in these channels; he wrote effortlessly, turning out as many as four or five songs a day or jotting down in the morning dances that he had improvised at the piano the evening before. It was a protected environment, providing support, status, local success and feedback. Within this Gemeinschaft he came to maturity as a composer and it gave him ...”

“... far beyond the media. Sir John Hunt, a former cabinet secretary, broke cover as early as election day 1983 to voice the discontents of the mandarins:In the absence in our system of a chief executive with his own supporting staff, a ‘hole in the centre’ of government was perceived which an overworked cabinet seemed incapable of fulfilling. It was widely ...”

“... tone more false, the posturing more dishonest: ‘Potto said he was drawing you a picture – 3 robin red breasts against the moon – but its still unfinished. (Did you know that he has taken up art, to cure his heart? Neglect broke it.)’ With Ethel (her ‘uncastrated cat’) her relationship was more adult, had less fantasy in it, but also much less ...”

“... when I was older I saw Bankswood pictures: this photograph or similar ones, perhaps taken that day, perhaps weeks earlier, or weeks later. In the 1950s photographs often didn’t come out at all, or were so fuzzy that they were thrown away. What remains as a memory, though the colour has bled away, is the fast scudding of clouds, and the rush of sound over ...”

“... Schama’s advice helpfully prescribed in the blurb – ‘take a dose of the book at least once a day and retire early to bed’ – will sleep easy. In fact, two narratives are here in constant tension. One is an up to date, deeply informed, but ultimately traditional, history of medicine, though mercifully short on the genealogy, on who begot whom, which ...”

“... in a game of chess and claims Edain as his prize. When Midar returns to the palace a year and a day later to fetch Edain, and is challenged by the King of Munster’s army, he lulls the king, his men and the queen into a trance by playing a golden harp and singing to them, before stealing Edain away. Wilde also included a more recent account of an Irish man ...”

“... In the event Lawrence contented himself with ringing a bell in college in the middle of the day, since All Souls ‘needs waking up’. Graves and Nancy tried to support themselves while he was in theory an undergraduate by setting up a general store in Boars Hill outside Oxford, the landscape across which Matthew Arnold’s Scholar Gypsy had wandered ...”

“... excess, when they would begin drinking as soon as the pubs opened in the morning, carry on all day, take a bottle of whisky and a bottle of vodka with them into a late-night movie, and continue through the night drinking home brew at Peter’s house. During these two-man carnivals they would go into a hotel, plug all the baths and leave the taps ...”

“... and the ‘ragged peasants’ he met. There, he said, ‘it was as though Homer had come alive.’Robin Flower, another English scholar who came to the Blaskets (in 1910), also perceived this kind of timelessness or a connection to a time and a culture long passed. In The Irish Tradition, he described meeting an old man on a path on the island who, ‘without ...”

“... though, in which Raffles, mercurial as ever, shrugs on, if only for the moment, the mantle of Robin Hood. In ‘A Jubilee Present’, Raffles offers his take on the gold cup which is to be presented to the nation to celebrate the queen’s Diamond Jubilee: ‘A number of the immorally rich clubbed together and presented it to the nation; and two of the ...”

“... in certain constituencies, such as the famous Basildon; and c. keen readers of the Sun. On the day of the 1992 general election the Sun ran a headline saying: ‘IF KINNOCK WINS TODAY, WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE BRITAIN TURN OUT THE LIGHTS.’ After the result it ran another headline saying: ‘IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT.’ That was a joke, but from the ...”

“... and about whether that was a first example of industrial action … Let me start with that sad day in March 1603, when our beloved sovereign of blessed memory, Elizabeth, died … I was concerned about my hon. friend’s attack on the Victorian age, which was one of the finest ages in British history, when most employers were benevolent, kindly, good … I ...”

“... land because of the difficult terrain and members of the unit got by on a bowl of boiled rice a day. ‘We fought with all the weapons we had,’ the major said. ‘Even the unit’s cook carried a gun and fought alongside the soldiers. But we were running out of ammunition. Thirteen men had been killed and more than a third were injured. We were becoming ...”

“... with the law; her push-back against the intransigence of police and politicians. And then, one day last year, I stumbled on this paragraph: ‘David Boyd, 54, of Chesterton Court, Stockton, Teesside, has been charged with the murder of Nikki Allan.’ And I knew I was going back to Wearside.I found it utterly changed: the infrastructure, the ...”

“... trial didn’t take place until June 1943. ‘For the moment I write all I can, awaiting the evil day of prosecution,’ he said in 1942. But as the trial approached, his attitude changed perceptibly. Writing to his friend the journalist David Ayerst, Tippett declared himself ‘very much at peace and ready to go’.On 21 August 1943, at 7.30 ...”