“... wrote, ‘but starts rather from an inner fact of his individual consciousness.’ These two views may not be contradictory for most poets, but they are problematic in the case of MacDiarmid because he had been built from the outside in. In 1939, MacDiarmid wrote to an aspiring writer who had sent him some poems: so far from producing poetry you seem to me to ...”

“... gave him some problems after the war. He was denied a visa to enter the United States in May 1955, at the height of the anti-Communist hysteria. (The public rebuke came just as Oppenheimer was being interrogated by the Atomic Energy Commission’s personnel security board, although Oppenheimer’s case was secret at the time.) Nearly two decades ...”

“... declared, people would undoubtedly address a boy wearing such a jacket as ‘Buttons’. He may well have been thinking of Buttons the page in the pantomime version of Cinderella. In America, too, the pages or ‘call boys’ whose instant availability was crucial to the smooth functioning of office block, luxury hotel and legislative chamber alike ...”

“... man, less cocksure and more wary, wanting to do some good and make a difference, but afraid it may be too late. The Friends of Harry Perkins traces his rise from the backbenches to the brink of Downing Street. The time frame for this is deliberately confusing. As Mullin tells us in his preface, the new book is set in a future that overlaps with the recent ...”

“... and become an air-traffic control assistant, but he is worried about a medical report which may prove him to be tubercular. The dust-cover biography of Alan Sillitoe suggests that the story may be partly autobiographical. The second section, a quarter of the length, gives us Paul Morton (in the third person, no longer ...”

“... years has been the miserable lot of successive Princes of Wales. To Edward VII and Prince Charles may be added the names of every long-suffering heir since the Hanoverians took over: George II, George IV and Edward VIII, not forgetting poor Prince Frederick, the son of George II and father of George III, who did not survive to reign at all. Whatever their ...”

“... is history in a nutshell.’ And indeed it is. But whose history? Exemplary as this Irish martyr may be, the priest is unable to identify him because he does not feature in the standard martyrology of Irish nationalism. He is, of course, Oscar Wilde. By the time this satirical scene occurs, two-thirds of the way through At Swim, Two Boys, Jamie O’Neill’s ...”

“... for instance, regression goes back far enough) it can once more be brought to light.’ This may be an extreme position, but given a well-organised institutional or doctrinal subculture and a relatively small nation-state, it is by no means fanciful to imagine that ideas can be passed around and down in more or less unmodified form. Such, for Rose, is ...”

“... having lived long enough to see another Conservative enter Downing Street. That prime minister, David Cameron, wanted to give her a full state funeral, putting her on the same level as Churchill. She vetoed the idea. So she was given a full ceremonial funeral instead, which placed her on a par with the Queen Mother and Princess Diana, though she received ...”

“... before the Reformation, The Stripping of the Altars, they have now made things even with David Daniell’s William Tyndale. Tyndale’s life is soon told. He was born, probably in 1494, of a landowning and entrepreneurial family in that part of Gloucestershire where the Cotswolds meet the Severn, since then the home of Evelyn Waugh (temporarily: the ...”

“... The present commentator refuses to play the game. He recognises Tippett’s genius, even though he may not sufficiently understand it. But he also recognises confusion and vagueness for what they are – an inadequacy. Good or bad, for better or worse, this review isn’t worth your attention unless you accept that there is no substitute for, no viable ...”

“... transatlantic triumphs? Is it a bird, is it a plane? Well, as often as not, it turns out to be David Cannadine – easily mistaken for a plane, of course, because, as he confides in this volume of collected reviews, ‘not a few were pondered and drafted in mid-air.’ Now that this brilliant brain has dramatically drained, from Christ’s ...”

“... one. By all accounts he was very good at it. The final national servicemen were demobilised in May 1963, just a few days before Profumo confessed to the House of Commons that he had lied about the nature of his relationship with Christine Keeler. After Profumo’s resignation, there were two further, short-lived secretaries of state for war (Joseph Godber ...”

“... a pledge in the Tory Party manifesto to hold an in-out referendum on membership of the EU. But he may have done so in the belief that it wouldn’t be needed because he was unlikely to win an overall majority and the commitment could be bargained away in another coalition deal with the Lib Dems. When he did win a majority he was caught. General elections are ...”

“... David Arkell calls his biography Looking for Laforgue and he has undoubtedly found him. Without attempting what is popularly labelled ‘official’ biography, Arkell’s informal portrait is so convincing that it is hard to see an official biography adding more than superfluous detail. He brings us close to the living temper of a poet who is still fairly unknown to English-speakers but who, through his impact on T ...”