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“... educationalists of the turn of the century. ‘There was something royal in her nature,’ Octavia Hill wrote. There was also a strongly masculine element. She was one of the conspicuous successes of the liberal and unsectarian Bedford College: a brilliant scholar (as well as an expert carpenter) and a supporter of liberal movements – she kept as a souvenir ...”

“... corps dutifully reported the official Pentagon version of events. A US navy captain called Mark Hill, who was working on a project for McNamara, eventually let Hersh in on the real, catastrophic story. (Hill was one of the honourable soldiers on whom Hersh came to rely.) ‘I remember being angry, of course, but also more ...”

“... the world seemed freshly made and the future ceased to matter. Beneath the tropical sun on Toucan hill, ignorant, momentarily, like a Yanomami, of the laws of science, gazing at that little egg, I might have been looking at one half of an empty eggshell, a message of brown and purple blotches on a background of browny-white, a present from a mistle-thrush ...”

“... to be the last. Already, in 1825, the tall tower of William Beckford’s new baronial hall. Font-hill Abbey, had collapsed without warning. A few years after the Eglinton debacle, one of the day’s leading artists, William Dyce, was commissioned to paint allegorical frescoes on Arthurian themes in the Queen’s Robing Room in the new Houses of Parliament. A ...”

“... countrymen showed little enthusiasm for that cause and had to be bullied to fight for Prince Charlie. A recruiter complained that the men of Dunkeld were ‘quite degenerat from their Ancestors, and not one spark of Loyalty among them’. But Atholl Highlanders, who had eagerly welcomed the Hanoverian Campbells, supposedly their traditional foes, were ...”

“... be alive.Sydney, however, could not cajole her. It was not the moment for a nice luncheon, or a Charlie Chaplin film, or even Mudie’s. With a timetable even more strict than usual, he had to catch the 4.30 to Dorchester, where Florence was reading Hardy’s memoirs aloud to him in instalments.After he had gone Charlotte wrote to Kate, congratulating her ...”

“... like this than with practical Christian conduct. Anyway I made my protest and the producer ‘Charlie’ Bispham, the chemistry master (dapper figure, pencil moustache), was gratifyingly sarcastic, thus assuring me I was a martyr for my faith. But I didn’t say the line – and probably a lot of others as I was never very sure of the text. Twerp, I think ...”

“... than in Days of Heaven, Malick gives us a sense of the group, the soldiers in C Company – C for Charlie – sent to fight the Japanese on the island of Guadalcanal. They are a disparate group, lacking in the patriotic spirit and soldierly solidarity usual in war movies. They face death together in the greenest of battlefields, but the fear visible on their ...”

“... idea to see how he dealt with his children. A photogravure from 1865 in the garden at Gad’s Hill: Katey stands and Mamie sits. The game with Sydney, for example, where the child’s enthusiasm is first encouraged then thwarted, the boy spurred on to believe he is performing a useful task only to find himself frighteningly excluded, father and siblings ...”

“... eft’ (I iv) in a review by Kingsley, Ricks notices the witty conflation of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the King Charles spaniel in I ix – but others are of real significance. Ricks doesn’t cite Tennyson’s revealing comment that the narrator’s belief in the innate patriotism of the commercial classes (‘For I trust if an enemy’s fleet came ...”

“... kill.’ At 7 p.m. on 23 September 1966 a nine-man ambush patrol from 1/5th Marines set out from Hill 22, north-west of Chu Lai. It was nominally led by Sergeant Ronald Vogel, but an aggressive 20-year-old combat veteran, Private John Potter, announced he was assuming command: the mission would be a ‘raid’. Every man was told to remove his unit ...”

“... of Seattle I thought I heard a roar of delighted recognition coming from my neighbours on the hill. Palin doesn’t need to say what Poujade used to tell his listeners, ‘Look me in the eye, and you will see yourself,’ and ‘I’m just le petit Poujade, an ordinary Frenchman like you’: all she needed was her trademark blink from behind her librarian ...”

“... under great pressure.’ But what really made me sit up straight was his remark about Geoffrey Hill’s ‘Annunciations’, the last poem in the book: ‘I understand “Annunciations” only in the sense that cats and dogs may be said to understand human conversations (i.e. they grasp something by the tone of the speaking voice), but without help I ...”

“... in art.One day​ he set out on a walk from the town (he was a good walker), made his way up the hill and along the Poole Road and eventually arrived at the villa at 63 Alum Chine Road, where he rang the bell. Valentine Roch, the Stevensons’ servant, mistook him for a carpet dealer who had let them down. First she kept him in the vestibule, then sent him ...”

“... and in between carrying out the tests on Josephine he and I chatted about the great days of Charlie Cooke, David Webb and Peter Osgood. He told me it was already too late to try AZT and 3TC on Josephine but he was cautiously hopeful. ‘To get Aids there has to be mixing of blood, which means there has to be a break in the skin or an open sore due to ...”