“... than the failures of idleness.’ Evelyn Waugh, on the whole in kindly mood, reported to Diana Cooper in Paris that Connolly was ‘wholly absurd in his serious moments, which are becoming more and more frequent ... he sees himself as a Public Relations Officer for Literature’, but ‘he is a droll old sponge at his best and worth six of Quennell.’ It ...”

“... Back in 1975 the SNP’s arguments were diametrically opposite. The party’s leading strategist, Stephen Maxwell, argued a few weeks before the 1975 referendum that ‘a No vote here against a Yes vote in England would be ideal … This is our great opportunity to further Scotland’s cause.’ The SNP gloried, then as now, in the possibility of a Scotland ...”

“... Sillars, the other central figure in the book is the SNP’s onetime guru-in-chief, the late Stephen Maxwell, whose name is largely unknown even to those who follow Scottish politics. Nobody did more than Maxwell to formulate the now dominant idea of left-wing nationalism. As late as 1982, Alex Salmond and other members of the Maxwellite 79 Group were ...”

“... was ‘like a gloomy priest presiding over my affections and spontaneity’, and later telling Stephen Spender that Eliot’s reputation had overshadowed his whole life. This reaction to Lewis, Eliot, and Spender himself, to whom, he said, ‘one must be infinitely forgiving’, was purely emotional. ‘Doesn’t daddy love to be loved?’ one of his ...”

“... sansculottes ... But when they rush off to war – all professing knightly devotion to Diana Duff Cooper – the epistolary evidence compels a different response. They really were a special breed. ‘It will be Hell to be in it and Hell to be out of it,’ said Rupert Brooke, who sailed cheerfully off with three Coterie chums to the Dardanelles, parading ...”

“... jury found that detectives didn’t carry out checks that could have prevented the serial killer Stephen Port from murdering at least three of his victims. The victims’ families believe that this lack of care was motivated in part by homophobia – Port met his male targets on dating apps. Detectives also failed to take such basic steps as running his name ...”

“... was it merely a reflection of the far more powerful and evil megawattage sweeping the Continent? Stephen Dorril’s intertwined biography of Mosley and British Fascism is exhaustive but easy-paced and entertaining, judicious – and damning. We shall not need another. He says pretty well everything that needs to be said, working his way carefully through all ...”

“... execution when his father reneged, peacefully playing what I would call ‘bulliers’ with King Stephen, who hadn’t got the heart even to frighten him. Clearly childhood status was often recognised and appreciated. It there was a difference between Medieval and modern conditions, one might expect it to come from the notion of the ‘higher love’ of ...”

“... well as one fascinated with crossing language barriers) that Scott was most important to Fenimore Cooper, ‘the American Scott’, and so to the tradition of cultural comparativism so strong in the American novel to Henry James and beyond. It is the comparative, multicultural nature of Don Juan that gives point to the un-English Byron’s statement in the ...”

“... of Criminal Tribes and Eunuchs of 1871, drafted by no less a legal luminary than James Fitzjames Stephen. This enabled the authorities to categorise ‘a tribe, gang or class’ as one ‘addicted to the systematic commission of non-bailable offences’, and thus as a ‘Criminal Tribe’. In 1871 a mere four tribes were so labelled, though the police wanted ...”

“... The nostalgic Charles Ryder is remembering the warm depths of a great mahogany-framed cooper bathtub at Brideshead. A huge towel hangs from a chintz armchair and a brass lever – ‘heavy as a piece of marine engineering’ – stands where moden taps might be. With its coal fire and steamdimmed watercolours, this bathroom is contrasted ...”

“... writes. Once he was in his late teens, it became fashionable to fall in love with Freud. When Stephen Spender, according to himself, told T.S. Eliot that he had succumbed, Eliot said: ‘There’s nothing I understand more.’ Spender and Freud spent some time in a cottage in Wales when Freud was 18 and produced a little book of drawings and poems ...”

“... it corresponds to actual changes. On 8 April, the Muslim religious reformer Tariq Ramadan spoke at Cooper Union in New York City and, on an occasion that was part colloquium and part debate, a crowd of the curious were permitted to hear a leading moderate voice of world Islam. This would not have been possible under Cheney and Bush: Ramadan’s visa had been ...”

“... they were works by Browning and Arnold. In an era when female humour was disparaged (Leslie Stephen wrote an essay claiming it didn’t exist) and women’s laughter perceived as an imposition on civilised company (Trollope believed a true lady would have ‘a great fund of laughter, which would illumine her whole face without producing a sound from her ...”

“... But like several clever men who went out to India – Virginia Woolf’s uncle James Fitzjames Stephen, for example – his intelligence only intensified his reactionary instincts. Brought up in the lawless backwoods of Co. Tipperary, O’Dwyer believed in Order first and last (and not much Law to go with it). He regarded any reforms designed to give ...”