“... Oxford philosophy was a competitive business; there were certain prizes that one had to win, the John Locke Prize, the All Souls Fellowship; but Ayer’s fate was to be pipped by his contemporaries, Isaiah Berlin, Goronwy Rees and the slightly younger J.L. Austin. As an undergraduate he had been taken up by Maurice Bowra and acquired a certain celebrity by ...”

“... came his 1948 book The Other Side of the Hill (a quotation from the Duke of Wellington, who told John Wilson Croker that he had ‘spent all his life guessing what was on the other side of the hill’). This was military history from the opposing army’s perspective and with the politics and ethics left out. General Sir Percy Hobart, the most cussed of the ...”

“... kiss, Africans copulate’). This thorough conspectus of the continent invites comparison with John Gunther’s Inside Africa, a survey done in the last days of colonialism, and, until events overtake it, The Africans should stand, in succession to Gunther, as the most accessible and comprehensive overview of the continent. The twenty-odd years since the ...”

“... simpleton. That’s true, certainly: but then, fascism is a simpleton’s politics, and Campbell took to it wholeheartedly. Having identified himself to the world as a Spanish fascist, Campbell immediately, and with characteristic perversity, declared his essential Britishness and joined the British Army. He served with the King’s African Rifles during the ...”

“... strife under Vichy and the Nazi occupation, have come from transatlantic scholars such as John C. Cairns, Philip Bankwitz, Telford Taylor and Robert O. Paxton. Eleanor M. Gates might modestly disclaim inclusion in such distinguished company. But she has produced a splendid book which is both instructive and moving. She is not much interested in the ...”

“... of President Wilson, the pinnacle of American prestige in the world, and to their reassertion in John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural speech. The Senator for New York, as he now is, has served four Presidents, and acted as American Ambassador to India and the United Nations. He is engaging, witty and learned; his prose has the facile deliciousness of Bourbon ...”

“... hardened around the 1830s, but in other respects the forms that quoted and unquoted dialogue took in the 19th century, and the interplay between them and between dialogue and narration, were continuously variable and inventive. The complexity of the subject can be suggested by setting side by side two examples from Dickens noticed by Lambert.   Says ...”

“... These fairies are not akin to the wispy little dragonfly creatures, located at Cottingley, that took in Conan Doyle when he saw them on film. Not being mere puffs of sugariness, they’re unsuitable fare for the nursery. It’s been recognised for some time that the Victorians debased their fairy lore, in the course of desexing it. ‘The Victorian ...”

“... and falsity, reasonableness and unreasonableness. He is deeply concerned to show that Jefferson took his theory of the moral sense from Francis Hutcheson: he seems not at all interested in whether the theory of the moral sense is true. He seems, indeed, not even to be interested in how it fared in the intellectual arguments of the 18th century. And this ...”

“... the recording had been a rush job for George, occupying four days between two singing dates with John Chilton’s Feetwarmers. Edward asked him to undertake the job because they had both been collectors of Surrealism. Edward had been a collector of Dali and Magritte on a scale that can be called patronage; George made a faultless selection of Magrittes from ...”

“... goddess never left the plucky Eisenhower country mapped by these ‘artworks’. Everyone from John Baldessari to the Rev. Howard Finster recombines tulle and Disney, winged sunglasses and King Kongs with the truly scary hairy monster which has been bought 800 million times. The introduction is helpful about that figure: ‘imagine the population of India ...”

“... lover, he undid the 16 tiny buttons of her pretty dress and in Judy’s room on Judy’s bed he took her at once without a word. Afterward, having established tenancy, he rewarded her with kisses. But he dressed quickly because he was obligated by the stories of his life to remind her of transience. It is the ex-wife Anna who thinks ...”

“... that if he was afraid he might go ashore. He then wrote a farewell letter to his wife and took the Blenheim out into the Indian Ocean, where all aboard went down in a cyclone, including Admiral Troubridge. To relieve the roll-call of mass drownings we are given frequent items which shed peculiar light on the seafaring life; as, for instance, the ...”

“... themselves the beneficiaries of the electoral realignment Timothy anticipated. In the event, it took two general elections and parliamentary stalemate over Brexit for Labour’s ‘red wall’ to crumble, and by then Timothy – like Hill and, eventually, May – had long since paid the price for perceived failure. His fall was cushioned by well-remunerated ...”

“... her ‘reckless rustle over depths and difficulties’, which was very like a man to think.)When John Blackwood, who was publishing Miss Marjoribanks in serial in his magazine, taxed Oliphant with making Lucilla too ‘hard’, she responded: ‘I have a weakness for Lucilla, and to bring a sudden change upon her character and break her down into tenderness ...”