“... this was outrageous and he was going to accept the challenge of the Sunday Times. In order to kill Tony Howard’s new job he forbade any of us to speak to him. Uncharacteristically, Crossman did not follow this entry with any comment or aside, and the remainder of the six-year narrative does not include any ‘off the record’ meetings with his ...”

“... Queen’s English that deliberately celebrates the sort of cultures where dialect is spoken. Tony Harrison does this when he harnesses his Classical learning and tones to write about working-class life in Leeds (he also uses straight dialect); Douglas Dunn does it when he writes in Northlight with Marvellian decorum about Tayport; Les Murray when he ...”

“... The righteous Harry Wharton, of course, joined the Labour Party, under the name of David Owen or Tony Benn, and screwed the whole thing up with public-school Character and Leadership. These Frank Richard types could have been recognised at our ordinary day-schools but (such is the gang spirit) we liked to think that they were essentially products of the ...”

“... birth’ was sufficient), but trouble was inevitable. In 1701, in the historic case of Ashby v. White, a writ was brought before the Queen’s Bench to nullify the election of the MP for Aylesbury because the town mayor had unlawfully kept a voter out of the polls. Chief Justice Holt’s fame among lawyers rests on his having reputedly threatened the ...”

“... Britain two years ago, police vans lined the streets to hide Free Tibet protestors from him; Tony Blair chose to talk trade rather than human rights. In January 1995, about a year after she had first met the Dalai Lama, Hilton received an early-morning phone call from his secretary, asking her to come to McLeod Ganj as soon as possible. She arrived to ...”

“... proved to have sadistic tendencies which she didn’t enjoy, while the theatre and film director Tony Richardson was so nervous of her that when lodging with the Smiths in St John’s Wood he hardly dared to take a bath. Manning’s generally direct and sophisticated treatment of sexual behaviour is one of the strengths of her fiction. In The Wind ...”

“... or anything composed in a language other than English, or by anyone who wasn’t a white man. He had as little time for science fiction that didn’t follow his own strict prescriptions as he did for ‘so-called mainstream fiction’ – a category that he seems to have defined in contrast to science fiction, on the one hand, and the work of ...”

“... housekeepers’. (A humiliating photo from the second release shows Mandelson in white Y-fronts and a T-shirt talking to a young woman in a bathrobe.) It’s just about possible that Mandelson didn’t notice the abuse – the girls simply didn’t matter to him – but like most of Epstein’s circle he knew that squalid innuendo and sexual ...”

“... for survival in the competitive, meritocratic postwar world. These habits included a black-and-white view of reality, moral certainty, and a healthy contempt for birth and breeding. Leavis was thus already a fine, intuitive polemicist and self-advertiser, who hardly needed much help from acolytes like Ford. The aggression built into the master’s ...”

“... an attack on a German town the mayor of which was persuaded to organise a surrender. After the white flag went up an enemy tank opened fire, ‘so I shot the mayor and withdrew.’ Haines cites this as an example of the ruthlessness which enabled Max well to mention the incident ‘casually to his wife, without apparently wondering whether she might think ...”

“... to fifty thousand dollars a year and a powerful work ethic. They are the middling sort that Tony Blair cultivates. Above them is a financial, educational and cultural élite; below, not a proletariat, but the canaille. The Revolt of the Elites is a lament for the middling sort and an assault on those who threaten them. Lasch’s case will be familiar to ...”

“... retreat: a. No more champagne is to be bought. Unless special directions are given, only the white or red wine, or whisky and soda will be offered at luncheon, or dinner. The Wine Book to be shown to me every week. No more port is to be opened without special instructions. b. Cigars must be reduced to four a day. None should be put on the table; but ...”

“... to despise the press, whatever its complexion, his daily paper generally the Telegraph. But, as Tony Richardson said, ‘he was a sublime and sometimes pugnacious publicist’ and could never resist an interview or an opportunity to sound off, particularly when common sense dictated otherwise. During The Old Crowd, for instance, he was shadowed by Tom ...”

“... ends: Paul turns out to be a pretty nice guy, and elicits sympathy by being wholly ignored by ‘Tony’. With a few like-minded friends he sets up a colloquium – a secret and ad hoc advisory group to the Treasury Select Committee which meets at Rules in Covent Garden – called The Closed Circle. This ought to be an opportunity to explain precisely which ...”

“... the prettiest name’), but quickly the images darken. Mangrove roots, ‘when dead’, ‘strew white swamps with skeletons’, and turtles ‘die and leave their barnacled shells on the beaches,/and their large white skulls with round eye-sockets/twice the size of a man’s’. In the poem’s second half, there are ...”