“... Boxley Abbey in 1538 at the time of the monastery’s dissolution. The removal was carried out by Geoffrey Chamber, an agent of Thomas Cromwell, who reported to his master that he had plucked down the Rood, ‘which has been had in great veneration’, only to find ‘certain engines and old wire, with old rotten sticks in the back of the same which caused ...”

“... further concessions. It believes that Brexit has put the Union itself in jeopardy, giving it the best chance it has had in a generation to achieve its main political goal of Irish unification. It is not a good time for Unionist politicians to be digging in their heels over secondary issues like legislation on the Irish language. But the DUP’s role as ...”

“... who represented swashbuckling capitalism; Keith Joseph, who represented high-minded anti-statism; Geoffrey Howe, who represented disciplined proto-monetarism. But she saw them all off easily. In this she was greatly helped by their obvious lack of leadership qualities. Du Cann was cavalier and untrustworthy; Joseph was flaky and depressive; Howe was deadly ...”

“... and a wild eccentric in his social manner, as well as in his disorderly mandarin-style beard (Geoffrey Hill was apparently reminded of Empson when he saw a prize-winning Yorkshire terrier). At Richards’s funeral he read a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The organiser of the event, Richard Luckett, described him as speaking ‘inaudibly and inexactly ...”

“... of a tale well told and the secretive delights of obscurity and latent disruption. The point is best made in a remarkable piece on ‘The English Novel, circa 1907’. This brings together an unlikely assemblage of novelists, from Elinor Glyn and Florence Barclay to Chesterton, Arnold Bennett and Conrad. That their fictions all touched, however ...”

“... useful act of emotional intelligence which often appears in accounts of the moral life: the poet, best epitomised by Shakespeare, is able magically to conjure himself into modes of being quite other than his own, ‘continually in for and filling some other Body’, as Keats wrote in a letter. Shelley sought to make the link between artistic creation and ...”

“... Prior puts much of the blame for the industrial relations disasters of the Heath Government on Sir Geoffrey Howe rather than on Heath himself: it was Howe who insisted on trying to rebuild the entire edifice of industrial relations by imposing a legal framework which neither the employers nor the unions wished to touch with a bargepole. Indeed, Howe wanted to ...”

“... referring to herself as ‘head of state’ and talking of ‘I, as a government’. Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson may have fulminated against her, in the course of reviewing this book, but they helped launch the good ship Thatcher and sailed in her fatly for many a year, long sustaining and defending her against those who objected from the ...”

“... he made all through his life, Gould’s first Goldberg (he re-recorded it in 1981) is still his best known, still his most astonishingly vibrant and fluent recorded performance. Part of its impact came from the fact that it had no competitors or predecessors (only Wanda Landowska had done it on harpsichord and Rosalyn Tureck, little known outside New ...”

“... was living on £46,000 a year, Mandelson borrowed £373,000 (eight times his MP’s salary) from Geoffrey Robinson, an industrialist Blair put in the Treasury after New Labour’s victory. Robinson’s fortune had been inflated by dealings with Robert Maxwell, the Channel Island tax havens and a legacy from a satirically named Madame Bourgeois, a Belgian ...”

“... term for conveying all the cruelties that were inflicted in such places before death.’ The best sustained piece of thinking in the book is by Derwent May, on the media. His central insight, well followed and well worth following further, is of the collusion or complicity implied in euphemism, its willing suspension of ...”

“... high C is a triumph, but The Tempest, for example, cannot live up to the melancholy lyrics of its best songs. Prospero says he forgives his brother, but he only means he has trapped him. ‘Justice has triumphed over injustice, not because it is more harmonious, but because it commands superior force; one might even say because it is louder.’ And when ...”

“... per cent are separated internally from their land because of settler roads and housing blocks. At best Palestinians will have access to 54 per cent of the West Bank once the wall is completed. Twenty-nine settler highways or bypasses spanning 400 kilometres of the West Bank, explicitly designed to provide freedom of movement for 400,000 Jewish settlers while ...”

“... metal splinter. Zuckerman continued to use rabbits – served up for dinner afterwards – but the best results came from photographing a blob of gelatine as a bullet went through it. The stricken jelly expanded to four times its original volume as a cavity formed inside. Then it went through a series of pulses and collapsed to its original size. This kind of ...”

“... of Augusta’s patron Stephen Van Renssalaer, mad Cousin Harry Crosby, the subject of Geoffrey Wolff’s Black Sun.) Why is Parker telling us all this? Because he can, because he knows it, because he thinks we should know it; and no editor at Johns Hopkins dared tell him different. He is so extraordinarily learned, so indefatigable and cherishing ...”