“... understandably, since it’s the verdict of a friend over many years, with no axe to grind – is Edward Clodd’s judgment: ‘he was a great author: he was not a great man; there was no largeness of soul.’ His words are cited more than once in the Thomas Hardy Annual, No 1 – inevitably, for they lay an explosive charge under the academic growth-industry ...”

“... them centred on his ownership of an uncontrollable Welsh corgi. The name of this dratted animal is Edward. Edward will respond to nothing but the stern tone in the voice of Muriel Pritchett, a scatty dog-trainer with artificially frizzy hair and a thrift-shop outfit. Thus, we have a couple of archetypal scene-stealers ...”

“... to decide how seriously he should take his themes. As leader of a group of expensively educated young men, Auden was protected against ‘all contact with serious critical standards’.The fact that Leavis offered the precise critical challenge didn’t mean that it was taken up in his terms, or indeed in any other terms. At a fairly early point, Auden ...”

“... for the book has a slight smell of school changing-rooms, a touch of Stalky’. And the young Auden did seem to fancy himself as qualified to lay down the law to an awed class. When compelled into it he disliked the life of the schoolmaster, but it took him some time to rid himself of such fancies, and the stern expository manner that went with ...”

“... sad and resigned, it wears a tired face, seamed and worn, similar to our own.’ All over Europe young men were finding out much the same thing, but this scholar and essayist, the friend and colleague of Benedetto Croce, put the matter unusually well. Like most young Italian intellectuals of the time, he was keen on ...”

“... of the 19th century could be counted on the fingers of one hand. In Sense and Sensibility Edward Ferrars, who has chosen to do nothing for a living and regrets it, reels off four possibilities:I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for ...”

“... Nancy Mitford’s first novel, Highland Fling, is about a young British gentlewoman in the late 1920s, wriggling uneasily but divertingly in the generation gap of her time and class. Her parents’ generation seems to be stuck in the mud of the grouse moors: tough as old boots, the elders blaze away, pausing to reminisce about World War One and the filthy Hun ...”

“... as a masculine protest against the mechanical womb he inhabited. And in Portrait of the Artist a young man informs his friend that he admires, the Venus de Milo because her broad hips show she would be good at bearing his children. To maintain the Silent Service’s reputation for courtesy the officer no doubt merely reminded his mentor of the limited ...”

“... curtains of Irish lace. ‘That dog has no right to be walking over there,’ said the lady. The young man smiled and snapped his fingers. ‘Dog got no sense of history,’ he said, then he laughed. ‘And you got none neither,’ she said, pressing the tissue into her sleeve. Only ten minutes’ walk from the Kennedy house in Brookline, another ...”

“... In First Among Equals, Jeffrey Archer introduces a Labour MP who is likewise endangered by a young black girl ‘in a white leather mini skirt so short it might have been better described as a handkerchief’. But, unlike D.M. Thomas, both Raven and Archer are accomplished storytellers, keen on verisimilitude. Both are skilled in the use of stock ...”

“... who – he suggests – probably heard it from Reggie Turner. In her version, ‘a curious, very young, but hard-eyed creature appeared, looked at him, gave a sort of laugh, and passed on. He felt, he said, “as if an icy hand had clutched at his heart”. He had a sudden presentiment. He saw a vision of folly, misery and ruin.’ The sex of this ...”

“... partnerships every week; it was impossible to bowl to them. When in 1969-70 this lot, plus the young Pollock brothers, Peter and Graeme, slaughtered the Australians by four tests to nil, you felt that it had been waiting to happen. Years later, my Durban state school, Northlands, had two old boys on opposing sides in a test: Robin Smith for England, Shaun ...”

“... into insanity, probably resulting from syphilis caught during his rowdy years in the theatre as a young man. These complications could not chill his exuberant flow of invention, or exclude him from centres of prestige and power. Dazzlingly precocious, he was designing furniture for the king in Windsor Castle at the age of 15. Towards the end of his short life ...”

“... be disappointed on opening the book, which succeeds in spite of itself and the line it takes. Edward Garnett told Lawrence that The White Peacock had every fault known to the English novel but that its author had genius. Elizabeth Smart was not a genius: but she is the rare case of a writer who succeeds by writing as if she were one. She succeeded in her ...”

“... not at all like Swann and even less like Proust himself. A literary parallel would be Stendhal’s young hero Lucien Leuwen, though it would be difficult to imagine him transposed into the English social scene. Duff Cooper had the same great capacity for enjoying life, which is not uncommon: much less common was his ability to do so in such a way that the ...”