“... that the writing of criticism is often an act of postponement. This explains a lot: what are Christopher Ricks’s essays, say, or Harold Bloom’s books, but preludes to great unwritten poems? And mere reviewing is even worse: apology rather than excuse. So was Alvarez wasting his time? Not entirely. He was and remains one of the few critics both to ...”

“... and its personnel were far brighter than SIS’s ‘failed cavalry officers recruited in White’s or Boodle’s’. It was also less socially exclusive than the other secret services, giving it a wider pool of potential talent to trawl, though that was also thought to pose dangers: could the other classes’ loyalties be trusted? Despite these ...”

“... laid on a grand night-time tour that climaxed in a visit to the Colosseum, which – according to Christopher Woodward in his excellent In Ruins – ‘was lit from inside by red lamps so that, as if ablaze, it cast a bloody glow on to the grass and the ruddy brick ruins on the surrounding slopes.’* Descanting to Albert Speer, his pet pseudo-classical ...”

“... to premature autobiography.’ Precocious Beverley Nichols headed the field with Twenty-Five while Christopher Isherwood and Cyril Connolly wisely allowed another ten years of their lives to elapse before they wrote, respectively, Lions and Shadows and Enemies of Promise. Hillier publishes long sections of Summoned by Bells which were excised, including ...”

“... At Thomas Hodgkin’s memorial service, in 1982, Christopher Hill, formerly Master of Balliol, used the pulpit of the college chapel to give an address entirely free of religious reference, quite a feat in view of Hodgkin’s Quaker roots and Hill’s status as historian of the Puritan revolution. ‘God was dead all right when you wrote that speech,’ I said to Hill afterwards ...”

“... in the character of the pig-woman Ursula – in the words of Peter Stallybrass and Allon White in The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986), ‘belly, womb, gaping mouth, udder . . . the celebrant of the open orifice’. It is a commonplace among critics that, since ‘Bartholomew Fair’ is almost the same thing or place as the theatre ...”

“... do much without Ray’s driving energy.’ She even found time, despite the birth of her son, Christopher, and periods of near constant bleeding and pain from uterine fibroids, to campaign for the removal of the iron grille from the Ladies’ Gallery of the Commons, allowing women a clear view when, on 6 February 1918, the Representation of the People Act ...”

“... inch a mandarin’ – and the political scientist Colin Leys. Qualified praise goes to Christopher Hill; there are fond memories of Tariq Ali (who contests one or two details in the memoir). Johnson remembers Hodgkin, a dogged adversary of Pretoria, refusing to sign a petition in favour of anti-apartheid activists who’d torn up the cricket ground ...”

“... and has been appropriated by all kinds: sophisticated literary critics such as Aidan Day and Christopher Ricks, slob biographers such as Bob Spitz, genuine crazies like A. J. Weberman, who, as founder of the Dylan Liberation front, used to conduct seminars to his groupies on the Dylan family’s garbage; fervent hagiographers like Paul ...”

“... for survival in the competitive, meritocratic postwar world. These habits included a black-and-white view of reality, moral certainty, and a healthy contempt for birth and breeding. Leavis was thus already a fine, intuitive polemicist and self-advertiser, who hardly needed much help from acolytes like Ford. The aggression built into the master’s ...”

“... red star from their caps. Not only that: they were flying the flag of the revolution – the red, white and green tricolour, with a jagged hole in the centre, where the Communist emblem, a hammer and wheat-sheaf, had been. Mikes had been a regular broadcaster in the BBC’s Hungarian Service for many years and the guards were among his listeners. Nothing was ...”

“... Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, published in 2016, the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels described what happened when sharks started attacking bathers off the New Jersey shore in the summer of 1916. It was a wholly unexpected turn of events: sharks had never been seen that far north before. When lifeguards began ...”

“... there’s a roof that needs retiling, and painted over the door of that mansion is a fading St Christopher. A further scale down, inhabitants appear: the finely dressed know-all, five millimetres high, who leans out from the window next to the mansion door, wisecracking to a friend; or the madam and client – perhaps – below the nearest downspout. I ...”

“... leg of a dead Moor. The man awoke to find himself healed, but for the rest of his life, he had one white leg and one black. Not all miracles healed. The saints could also liberate prisoners, bring rain or fair weather, give children to the barren and bring about victory in combat or in court. But when scorned, they wrought ferocious miracles of ...”

“... of which high thinking and plain living were to be enduring characteristics. After one glass of white wine had been poured, Clapp remembers ruefully, the bottle would be recorked and put back in the fridge. Clearly Carter, who believed that ‘our lives are all about our childhoods,’ was from an early age having interesting experiences in her ...”