“... the work of Oliver Cromwell’s widow – was published only to be lampooned, and another Civil War widow, Lucy Hutchinson, was constrained to complain of the ‘court caterpillars’ who could present her husband as a life-denier in spite of his affection for music and dancing and his ‘rule of temperance in meat, drink, apparel and all those things that ...”

“... is always social as well as personal, it is always for its bearer (an individual or even a class) both a resource in understanding and an impediment to understanding, laying some prospects effortlessly open to our cognitive grasp and shutting off others with at least equal firmness. Between what we can scarcely help experiencing and what we simply ...”

“... because they are presupposed to there being anything to explain.’ And to these he adds a second class of predicate, itself the product of scientific explanation, which enables us to identify those properties which constitute something as a such-and-such in the light of a particular scientific theory. Science, in other words, if Wiggins is right, cannot do ...”

“... some it has been cast as a comedy of manners, a charming period divertissement on life in middle-class America during the Vietnam era. Others have seen it as a diseased farce, a bilious Thersitical outpouring, soured by a deep-seated misogyny. I think it is both these things and more, all at the same time, which is why reading it is such a queasy ...”

“... rather better with Ms Lane and Ms Hayter. They, too, have their foibles. They confuse the pre-war six-day cycle races, run in the old Vélodrome d’Hiver, with the present-day, outdoor Tour de France. They call cadres (often middle-grade executives or white-collar workers) ‘senior officials’. They translate pétitions du principe ...”

“... of mind which tended to excessive preoccupation with what went on inside the mind itself? When the war came Williams was declared to be medically C3 because of bad eyesight, and he was told that he would be called up only for home duties. So he reasonably enough availed himself of ‘the permission given to ordinands by the Government to continue their ...”

“... generational groups in recent British history – the Oxford student cohort of the immediate post-war period who clambered aboard the great Labour surge of 1945-51. This cohort was the exact British analogue of the bright young New Dealers from the American Ivy League campuses so tellingly depicted by Mary McCarthy in The Group. For these young people, the ...”

“... on a scale of correctness. Its position now is simply that of one dialect among many – a class dialect in some areas and a literary dialect in a more general sense. But even as a literary dialect it is increasingly coloured by regional differences of idiom and vocabulary. In the past, strong advocates of a ‘national literature’ for countries like ...”

“... without descending into conflict. It was even possible – or so it was thought – to wage war in a civil manner. Civility, Keith Thomas argues, ‘could mean everyday politeness’, but it could also refer to ‘the most desirable condition of organised human society, what would come to be called “civilisation”, the opposite of barbarism’. This ...”

“... his vocal mannerisms. In particular he had developed what Americans thought of as a British upper-class stammer . . . It became almost impossible to distinguish between the two voices and even close friends could never quite work out at once who it was who had picked up the phone . . . There was something at once touching, funny and eerie about this partial ...”

“... surprising to find him saying: ‘In Britain the Westminster Gazette, which perished before World War II’ – actually in 1928 – ‘was the last paper that relied for its circulation on the political guidance it provided for its 25,000 readers.’ What about the Guardian, or the Morning Star, or the Daily Telegraph? And when one finds him writing about ...”

“... in the 1330s, but he was also paid for carpentry work. Minstrels serving their princes at times of war might pick up weapons when necessary.In a fascinating section on urban minstrelsy, Rastall (who wrote most of the chapters) draws on records from civic authorities and guilds to describe some of the duties assigned to minstrels employed by towns. They were ...”

“... obsessed shepherd. The decades pass, fortunes fluctuate (Iceland did well out of the First World War, staying neutral and supplying proteins to the combatants), bust follows boom, and we are back where we started. Sheep are a mistake, Bjartur’s neo-feudal neighbour says; foxes are where the action is. It makes Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil look like a ...”

“... He was intended for the Methodist ministry and perhaps for this reason never learned to dance. War shortened the medical course and in 1917, after his fifth year, he left for England as a member of the Canadian Army Medical Corps. ‘He saw a fair bit of action and received the Military Cross for his courage under fire at Cambrai, where he was wounded in ...”

“... through the eyes of a spirited, imaginative, polio-stricken girl, the cosseted child of a middle-class Parsee family. Lenny has an ayah, a nanny, of whom she is inordinately fond, and Ayah has followers, attracted by her well-rounded Punjabi personality. Among these admirers she holds court, in the local park as well as in the kitchen and garden of her ...”