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“... accomplished? No junior minister more aptly represented that mood than the patrician Thatcherite Alan Clark. A big landowner, a poor QC and a minor historian, the jolly Clark decided to write a diary while in office. From 1983 to 1991, during which time he occupied three offices – Under Secretary at the Department of Employment, and Minister of State at ...”

“... all the time saying the responses without faltering. The first hymn is Newman’s ‘Lead Kindly Light’, which I try and sing, while making no attempt at the second hymn, which is ‘Kum Ba Ya’. The priest turns out to have a good strong voice, though its tone is more suited to ‘Kum Ba Ya’ than Newman and J.B.Dykes. The service itself is wet and ...”

“... chanted to each other by working-class kids in school bogs and allotment sheds, under the street light, at the bouncing back of the bus, serve a tribal purpose, emphasising the solidarity of the insider and initiate. But usually, also, as Mavis indicates, there is ‘something interesting’, to us as to her. The TV pro who can date any of the famous she ...”

“... mother, father, older sister, immigrant nursemaid – and the narrator, Wiley, who also appears as Alan Cohn and Harold ‘Buddy’ Brodkey. Adopted at two, Wiley/Alan/Buddy goes through several distinct phases: damaged infant, beautiful child, ugly and precocious young boy, ungainly, brooding adolescent. His point of ...”

“... to which he could devote himself, and he seemed all the more approachable because of a continuing light-heartedness that made young Etonians recognise a kindred spirit in the resident chairman of the school’s governing body. The genuineness of his interest in the young helps to account for the success of his ghost stories, many of which were written with a ...”

“... in frail fluted glass, and ladies holding wide their porcelain skirts. Suddenly in the pearly light of dawn in bursts this red, bullying monster. I read biographies backwards, beginning with the death. If that takes my fancy I go through the rest. Childhood seldom interests me at all. Craven. Driving to Giggleswick on the back road, I see a barn owl. It ...”

“... we not perhaps to question, since Longford wishes us to view Nixon’s subsequent career in this light, whether the will to fight should be judged against the purpose in fighting? Would you vote for Billy the Kid? A little later in the book: all [Nixon] could say was, ‘Mother, don’t give up.’ She pulled herself up in bed and said with sudden ...”

“... of themselves they have volunteered to their readers, and one can never address them in the light of it without turning into a lady in a hat. Whether as Larkin, Philip Larkin or plain Philip, his name is bound to turn up on every page of this book. Names strike more than they stroke, and I would like to think of him wincing as he reads, staggering under ...”

“... Teddy Kennedy – hold it firmly in your head, and leap aboard your spouse. Not easy with the light on. All the subjects of what Talese calls his ‘Odyssey’, doubtless leading the more academic reader to expect him to come home after nine years and screw the dog, eagerly talked about their early years of masturbation, and made it poignantly clear that ...”

“... suspects.) The National Association of Scholars, formed to fight the illiberal plague, keeps up a light drizzle of complaint; Stanley Fish and friends have halfheartedly organised a resistance. But the life has gone out of the row; when universities are trying to keep a roof over the syllabuses they presently teach, there’s less room for stand-up conflicts ...”

“... January, Yorkshire. Ring Mr Redhead, the coal-merchant at Ingleton.‘Hello, Mr Redhead, this is Alan Bennett. I’m wanting some coal.’‘Goodness me! I am consorting with higher beings!’Last time I rang Mr Redhead he said: ‘Well, I don’t care how celebrated you are, you’ll never be a patch on your dad.’ I remind him of this.‘That’s correct ...”

“... of the three worlds of the university, publishing and the mass media: ‘Our leading light is a tenured professor, a literary adviser, the editor of one or more series, a member of the readers’ committee in a big publishing house, a journalist, critic and leader-writer on a popular weekly or daily. He has a good old-fashioned spread of titles ...”

“... Chatterley for a reference for a gamekeeper. The magazine sort of launched me on a career, because Alan Pryce-Jones, who was then the editor of the TLS, gave me a lot of reviewing work. AH: How did you see your future then? FW: I suppose I feebly wanted to be a writer, but, apart from those stories, I couldn’t think what on earth I was going to do. I got my ...”

“... heirs are not necessarily the infallible custodians of his or her political legacy. The fact that Alan Ryan’s view of Bertrand Russell and my own are very closely similar is not, therefore, proof that we are both right. It is merely proof that our perceptions are compatible with a thorough knowledge of the evidence, and perhaps reason for suspecting that he ...”

“... on the atom-bomb project between 1942 and 1945: Berti, or Engelbert Egon August Ernst Broda, and Alan Nunn May, who was sentenced to ten years for it. Broda, who probably had the longer record of relations with Moscow, was never tried though seen as heavily suspect by the British security services. As it happens, I knew or met all three as well as a very ...”