“... it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, should …’ she took a moment to get the wording right: ‘Is it OK to still have children?’ Her comment spawned a flurry of pieces on why you should or should not procreate. But the thorny question of whether it is OK to have children – a question about what we owe one ...”

“... Lady Diana Cooper and countless other hedonistic Jazz Age types, Murphy, de Acosta and Garland took the right to play for granted, as well they might. Puritanism was an anachronism and in some renovated pagan sense tiresome and offensive too. In Cohen’s view, no doubt the most interesting thing her trio of subjects shared was an unorthodox ‘set of ...”

“... to be sure of a decent living in East Anglia. I went to see Agnew one May morning. Google Maps took me west out of Norwich on a fast road screened by trees from the countryside, then ushered me into the dense latticework of lanes on either side of the highway. It was hard to get a sense of the land beyond the hedgerows and woods and shaggy verges, but ...”

“... At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber. ‘Now that I have you to myself,’ said the Queen, smiling to left and right as they glided through the glittering throng, ‘I’ve been longing to ask you about the writer Jean Genet ...”

“... besides. When the Bill making the registration of births compulsory was introduced in 1836, Lord John Russell, recommending it to Parliament, said that everyone would ‘so soon perceive the benefit of having their children’s names inserted in the general register that it would not be very long before every one would be willing to concur in carrying out ...”

“... of port, the quiet converse of enlightened men!’ It is not surprising the signalman’s son took this amiss. In fact, Edward had admirably explained his address. Speaking of ‘genuine communication’, Raymond had said: ‘You can feel the pause and effort; the necessary openness and honesty of a man listening to another, in good faith, and then ...”

“... seen. Not a few of the characters the boom brought with it were larger than life too: ex-Governor John Connally of Texas, for example, still scarred from the Kennedy shooting, hustling for oil companies and on the way down to the bankruptcy that broke him, and T. Boone Pickens, the greenmail king, so thrilled with his acquisition of the Mesa field (which he ...”

“... the scrapping of train priority rules – seem to be entirely market-driven. Passenger trains once took priority over freight trains and fast passenger trains over slower ones. The Rail Regulator proposed in 1996 that the priority hierarchy should be abolished in order to give every train operator equal access to the system. His proposal was put to the RI but ...”

“... revisions as each generation enacts its patriotic commitment in a different way. China/Avant-Garde took place ten years after the People’s Republic’s first ever show of dissident art was staged on the same site. On that occasion the show coincided with the Democracy Wall movement, which was itself echoed in Tiananmen. Both protests claimed descent from the ...”

“... legally in the United States, so there was no merit in doing heavy work on the text. When Judge John Woolsey lifted the ban on the book – 6 December 1933 – Bennett Cerf set about issuing a new edition. But the text he gave his printers was a copy of Samuel Roth’s facsimile pirated edition, printed in New York: its errors remained to corrupt Cerf’s ...”

“... along with Catholics and Jews. Violence against the institutions of state, on the other hand, took the form, not of frontal assaults, but of symbolic attacks on ‘soft’ targets, as Fischer himself notes. It was the scale rather than the direction of Stormtrooper violence that disturbed Hitler and his respectable allies. This is an important ...”

“... to provide whisky and cigars for his European guests (as well as slave-girls for those, like St John Philby, sensible enough to embrace Islam). He only banned alcohol for foreigners in 1952, after a British consul had been murdered by an inebriated Saudi prince. Nowadays the fleshpots of Europe provide a safety-valve for those rich enough to afford them. If ...”

“... profession and the other asylums of London (especially Hoxton) when necessary. Lamb’s brother John had urged him not to take on this task: it was typical of Lamb to say that he understood John’s reasons for saying this, and thought no less of him for it, while disregarding his advice. The history of the fate of insane ...”

“... thought and action. It may even re-create that necessary illusion which scientific explanation took away, the illusion of human freedom. The third intellectual motive behind this kind of criticism contradicts such speculations. If it is combined with them, it is because the seekers after ‘human’ understanding have been reluctant to relinquish, in their ...”

“... can you go?, asserted of the traditional Catholic teaching on sex: ‘No doubt a few Catholics who took it seriously found it oppressive; but the majority lived in cheerful disobedience.’ Well, that is what it may have looked like from the perspective of Combe Florey House and Downside, but not, I can assure Mr Waugh, from the point of view of the Catholic ...”