“... a series of reforming pieces of legislation by the British government, the Irish rent-paying class were becoming smallholders. Peasants who leased land were becoming farmers who owned land, even if some of the newly created farms were small, and even if the two terms – peasant and farmer – resist easy definition.In 1870, the year before Synge was ...”

“... The rhythm of my notes changed, went in threes, lapped, lengthened. One day in metalsmithing class, I picked up a book called Dynamarhythmic Design: A Book of Structural Pattern, first published in 1932. It is about everything that can happen in a rectangle. The rectangle was the page. I thought of Plath’s poem ‘Stillborn’. I read ‘Nick and the ...”

“... of his former student Tom Outland, a prodigy and inventor who was killed in the First World War. The novel also offers a precursor to the two priest protagonists of Death Comes for the Archbishop in the figure of Father Duchene, who is described thus:Long afterwards Father Duchene came out to spend a week with us on the mesa; he always carried a small ...”

“... Clinton was so sure she would win Wisconsin in 2016 she scarcely visited). The sport of working-class people voting against their own interests has become a dependable spectacle in 21st-century America. Milwaukee remains one of the country’s most segregated cities, and Wisconsin is a battleground state that was won by Trump in 2016.In Milwaukee, the mayor ...”

“... Mating flies, they copulate on the wing, and Sam was having trouble making room for them amid the war-movie excitement and his wish to get things done. ‘I hate these goddamn fuck-bugs,’ he said. He crushed a pair with a paper tissue. ‘Look,’ he said to Terry. ‘They died in each other’s arms. Thought you’d like that.’ Terry’s greatest concern ...”

“... ignorance. Evelyn I had got trained, to a degree, but no one here knew anything of the arts of war. Giant Gazonka? They didn’t know him. Machine-gunning? They simply looked blank. Suppose a camel came in, and they had to command him? They went around with their mouths hanging open, and their noses running, with silver trails from nostril to top lip: with ...”

“... out that the Netherfield ladies, Mr Bingley’s sisters, superior and snobbish and alert to class difference, ‘would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so well bred and agreeable’. His wife ‘was an amiable, intelligent, elegant woman, and a great favourite with all ...”

“... with the BBC’s senior announcer, Leslie Mitchell, he became a voice of authority, the tone of war and peace, the man whom people heard in the cinema on the newsreels produced by British Movietone. Gamlin was a star. Terence Gallacher, who worked for Movietone at the time, remembers him visiting the offices at 22 Soho Square once a week. Gamlin was a ...”

“... say anything,” he said. “I don’t want my wife knowing I’m in the ten shilling class.”’‘Yes,’ Karl said, ‘Kavanagh is reported to have said that he wasn’t an intellectual or anything, but that it was great to have a poet like Auden, with his “well-stocked mind”, with his Freudianism and other isms. All junk of course, he ...”

“... city. Snooty. Cool, like its weather. The natty little old Slav three doors down could be a war criminal, for all I know. Once, his motor scooter, his pride and joy, tipped over and I helped him pick it up. He nearly wept with gratitude, but has never said hello or even acknowledged my existence, not before or since. But that night was different. People ...”

“... psychedelic revelation. One of the biggest distributors of LSD in California was a gang of working-class ex-surfers called the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, who merged Eastern mysticism with psychonaut politics and heavy-duty illegality. Chasing the white light and the dark sun. Chasing the memory of a high that will never be recaptured. John Milius’s wistful ...”

“... dash to Paris established the rhythm of flight and return. France and Prussia were already at war and a fog of suspicion hung over the city – whence the spell in jail. After his release, Rimbaud stayed in Douai with Izambard’s ‘aunts’, until his mother had him sent back. Over the next five years, the excursions became longer and the returns ...”

“... where the injustices experienced by women and children were accorded meaning and value, and with War and Peace, where the whole premise of the book was that you couldn’t explain war without recourse to domesticity and interpersonal relations. That was why I loved novels, and not newspapers. That was why I wasn’t a ...”

“... name was immaterial, as indeed was everything else, their clothes, their voice, their class. She was a genuine democrat, perhaps the only one in the country. To Sir Kevin, though, it seemed that she used his name unnecessarily often, and there were times when he was sure she gave it a breath of New Zealand, that land of sheep and Sunday ...”

“... Lancers; Francis, the second lord, went to Eton then served in the Ninth Lancers in the Great War; Savile, the third lord, went to Eton, served in the Ninth Lancers and became Master of the Horse; Hugh, the fourth lord, went to Eton, but dodged the Ninth Lancers; his four-year-old son, John, who will be the fifth lord, rides a tricycle with what looks ...”