“... the air. In 1888, another daughter, Beatrice, was born, followed two years later by Lillian Estella (known as Stella), and then a boy, Henry. Rose listed herself as a ‘tailoress’ on the 1901 census; around that time she returned to England, living in the Bedminster slums in Bristol, where she survived on piecework. Henry had died in ...”

“... city). Tories are comedy material, like Rik Mayall’s fictional creation of the late 1980s, Alan B’Stard MP. Googling ‘Tory MP’ throws up a rich array of associations, from ‘rapist’ and ‘jailed’, to ‘cronyism’ and ‘orange’ (a reference to the sexual practices of the late Stephen Milligan).Tories, however, have tended to have the last ...”

“... became president of the United Kingdom Supreme Court on 13 January 2020, succeeding Lady Hale. By the end of 2021, the Supreme Court had produced 111 judgments since his appointment, 53 in 2020 and 58 in 2021, with Lord Reed himself sitting in 56 of these cases. These decisions give us an opportunity to assess how his Supreme Court is performing in the ...”

“... To​ have one brother killed by an African animal would be a misfortune. To lose two, at different times, is surely remarkable. Such was the distinction of Sir Edward Grey, who served as foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916. A lion got his brother George, who was hunting in British East Africa in 1911: excited for the kill, he galloped too near his prey, missed and was mauled ...”

“... biologist and prominent popular science writer. But observers (and perhaps other chimps) could be forgiven for thinking it was a reference to Thomas Henry Huxley, the best-known ‘man of science’ in Victorian England, a comparative anatomist who also became the leading, and most aggressive, public spokesman for evolutionary ideas, to the point where he ...”

“... forces to prevent the Democrats from winning in 2024 – or ever again. The country appeared to be careening towards constitutional crisis, and the other side had all the guns.The extremist Republican candidates whom Trump had hand-picked, often by shouting down the warnings of other party leaders, served up a violent ...”

“... African attendees included President Zuma’s daughter Duduzile, his son Duduzane (accompanied by Miss South Africa, Tatum Keshwar) and Zuma’s billionaire benefactor Vivian Reddy. Heads of several government ministries, South African Airways, the South African Revenue Service, the national electricity company Eskom, and the state rail, maritime and ...”

“... away from us and from the refugees, his fist raised, ready to fight. But his eyes appear to be closed. Who or what presents the threat isn’t visible to us.Is the colossus protecting the people, or is it him they fear? Does he symbolise the French armies wreaking havoc across the Spanish hills or Spain standing up to the invaders? If the giant is ...”

“... Literary​ fans, as Alan Bennett once remarked, can be off-putting for the rest of us. Certain writers’ books get ‘fenced off by enthusiasts, and the casual reader may feel the need of credentials to read them’. Between 1956 and 1981 Mary Renault published eight novels set in ancient Greece that made her enormously, wildly popular ...”

“... I could not endure the labour in addition to the other labours of my life’ – for ‘it would be necessary to read an infinity of novels.’ Such a wholesale reading of fiction takes on for many of us, as for Trollope, ‘a terrible aspect’. It doesn’t apparently, though, for Gilbert Phelps, John Sutherland and Peter Keating, surveyors and ...”

“... to the implosion which has taken place in English studies, and the abandonment – now endorsed by the National Curriculum Council – of both English literature as a separate classroom subject, and set texts, the ‘cultural heritage’ which it was the special mission of school English to transmit. For some thirty years the whole tendency of educational ...”

“... reverence for Graham that she should have withheld until after Graham’s death what is by any standards an affectionate and appreciative account of her life and art, rather than risk offending Graham’s own sense of herself in the slightest degree. DeMille seems to feel that she is approaching something truly sacred in discussing Graham, rather ...”

“... maturing, even when we couldn’t see him. The author, Trollope claimed in another rhapsody, must be prepared to argue with his characters, ‘quarrel with them, forgive them, and even submit to them’. Trollope, not to put too fine a point on it, verges on the crazy in his insistence that his characters ‘live’. One would like to think it a foible ...”

“... have very high confidence that those nuclear reactors have been thoroughly damaged and will not be effective for quite some number of years,’ General Norman Schwarzkopf said on US television on 20 January, four days after the beginning of the air war in support of the liberation of Kuwait. Iraq’s ability to build nuclear weapons, he stressed, was at an ...”

“... how the large interstices between the few facts are filled, and on how much the verse is taken to be autobiographical. Helena Shire finds him to have been ‘a personable and distinguished young man, a witty and convivial companion’; Cranstoun sadly remarks that ‘fawning submissiveness, spiteful rancour, and lack of manly purpose – strange combination ...”