“... than the Book of Revelation. Orwell had Eton and the military police to draw on for 1984, and Alan Moore (V for Vendetta) had Orwell. What’s interesting is that for this ‘entirely new departure’ James stayed so close to the sense that runs through all her work of the horror of human intimacy, of touch (‘a collection of bones loosely held together ...”

“... that some form of multiracial executive must be created in Kenya, but the Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd was still adamant that ‘it will not be possible for many years to come to allow African members to be elected by universal adult suffrage.’ Some sort of ‘qualified democracy’ was required, the Government declared, to prevent ‘backward ...”

“... ago. There is a certain amount of unjustly neglected travel writing, such as the work of the late Alan Booth. But Japan has never attracted the attention of a Chatwin or a Naipaul, let alone fostered a Kipling, a Somerset Maugham, a Hemingway or a Paul Bowles. No one has had a greater yearning or been better qualified to fill this gap than Donald ...”

“... The Power and the Glory, but largely consist of forgotten country-house comedies, French classics, light farces, anodyne musical comedies and the work of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan (though, unlike today, there were no musical revivals, popstar tributes or shows based on films). In an era when the point of plays was to provide vehicles for star actors to ...”

“... love the Caledonian forest of Ballochbuie, the open invitation of its understorey, the play of light and shadow on the carpet of blaeberry and heather. Some of these Scots pines are older than the House of Windsor, older than the Acts of Union, older even than the House of Hanover. Still, it takes an effort to see beyond the royal presence. There are ...”

“... a corrosively individualist conception of life. Three recent semi-official publications throw some light on the relation between this conception and the reality of contemporary British society. In January 2009 the government announced the creation of a Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, chaired by Alan Milburn, a ...”

“... Hill himself spoke of ‘the constant presence of humour throughout my poetry, and even a light-heartedness which I think many critics have either wilfully neglected to notice or innocently overlooked’. The only disappointment when his immense collected poems Broken Hierarchies appeared in 2013 was Hill’s decision not to reprint most of the notes ...”

“... by Chardin, its inhabitants entranced and absorbed among everyday objects, blocks of colour and light overlaid with a sober, reverential geometry. Sardou was horrified. ‘Which Robespierre had she known?’ He proceeded to demolish her memories. Silly woman! Sentiment was blocking her access to her own history.It is possible – if fiction is your business ...”

“... was an explanation – alcoholism, misogyny, sublimated attraction – even if it only came to light decades after the fact.There was another reason Streisand wasn’t enjoying her first years in LA: her marriage was falling apart. Gould was jealous of her success and addicted to gambling. Both had affairs. ‘The parallels to Fanny Brice and Nicky ...”

“... Kidnapped was really our favourite, but we couldn’t call our daughter David, or name her after Alan Breck. She’d have to be named for the sequel.Like all my contemporaries, in those first years when the contraceptive pill was widely available, I only half believed I could coerce my body, and suspected that it might have some filthy tricks in store; but ...”

“... melodious cooing and flutter of wings on the lawn.’ At the front entrance Stevenson placed a ‘light’ in a model of the Skerryvore lighthouse, and he put a ship’s bell in the garden. (The original lighthouse was built by his uncle Alan, 12 miles south-west of Tiree.) Fanny put benches here and there, so that ...”

“... era was cold and dark and bleak, but there was a touch of pink in the east and a sense of the light slowly but steadily strengthening. In 1945, more than 70 per cent of the population was working-class, employed either as rural labourers or industrial workers. Over the next decade, their story would be one of growing prosperity and wellbeing, of widening ...”

“... second debating club, the Edmund Burke Society, whose set-piece occasions were meant to be more light-hearted. She presided with a meat tenderiser in place of a gavel; the motions she chose for debate included ‘That this House thanks Heaven for little girls’. Her boyfriend, Philip May, who was two years below her, succeeded her as president of the ...”

“... interesting word here is the one that hardly ever appears in Auden: ‘specially’. Given the light drum roll of ‘reverently, passionately’, one might have expected ‘especially’ to complete the triad, but ‘specially’ is more like a word a child might use – just a little more offhand, too taken up with play to coddle any distinction the aged ...”

“... he argues, philosophy becomes a kind of narrative activity, rehearsing its own pre-history in the light of its present-day interests and concerns. In fact, this is just what philosophers have always done – constructed some kind of legitimating narrative by which to explain their position – though the storytelling is usually presumed to have an end when it ...”