“... did he put it to the premier – Asquith had succeeded Campbell-Bannerman in 1908 – who had little choice but to accede. Already convinced that only he could win the war, he doubtless understood that he couldn’t hope to push Asquith aside without help – which Bonar Law was to provide. He put himself at the centre of the war effort, first as minister ...”

“... no use for hardihood,’ James says, ‘would be contemptible.’ In his own life, Michael has little time for the priesthood of the life force. He doesn’t believe in it; implicitly, he has ‘been preaching against literary vitalism all his career’. His only concession to life in extremis is an annual hunting trip, and in the opening chapter he ...”

“... their descendants have been regularly proposed in the US since the 18th century but there has been little comparable debate in the UK. Only with the growth of a significant Black population in Britain in the second half of the 20th century has the question of slavery and its legacies been brought into public view. The children of the Windrush wanted to know ...”

“... who were fed this tale (reinforced by Back-Room Boy, the propaganda comedy of 1942, starring Arthur Askey and set in a lighthouse). Maskelyne, whose Magic Gang never existed outside his memoirs, was of little practical use to the camouflage unit to which he was seconded, but was nevertheless encouraged, for a time at ...”

“... and his notorious surname associates him with criminality in the neighbourhood. ‘When he was little, Carney and his father played a game where he had to guess whether or not Mike was wearing his revolver under his pants leg. For a long time, he thought it was his father’s attempt to get close to him, bleak as it was. Now he was sure Mike was merely ...”

“... and intolerance, its suspicion of those who stand outside the ‘movement’. He twice quotes Arthur Henderson as saying that the plural of conscience is conspiracy (a statement new to me and I suspect of doubtful provenance). But, as Marquand knows, Henderson is the man who in 1918 wanted to rename the Labour Party the People’s Party, who freely ...”

“... of wagons, their occupants locked in some obscure struggle of their own, would have presented little problem to a marauding Zulu impi, unless that of throwing its assegais straight while doubled up with laughter. It is more plausible to take the scrum as the most explicit physical expression of the male bonding which Making Men sees at the heart of its ...”

“... in his ‘Peter Simple’ role, is more like the original prophet Nathan, telling an interesting little fable which abruptly concludes with a fierce, authoritative denunciation of his audience: ‘Thou art the man!’ (II Samuel xii 7). Young Michael was brought up vaguely C of E (like both his parents) and did not feel that the potent Hebraic name of Nathan ...”

“... Once upon a time there was a little girl who, at the age of two, had in some fashion to be told that her father had just cut off the head of the beautiful mother who used to lavish affection on her, and pretty clothes. Shortly afterwards the child learned that, although she retained contact with him, she had been officially repudiated as her father’s daughter, even if she probably had to wait a while before having it explained that this occurred because her mother had been accused both of adultery and incest ...”

“... a photograph of the vase on which that restoration was to be based. It was a method that allowed little room for disagreement – in a footnote Beard tells us that the limestone fragments have since been restored rather differently. The forward-driving logic of this teaching technique is also characteristic of Harrison’s scholarly writing, where she wheels ...”

“... for nearly five hundred continuous years, were celebrated in magazines like Country Life, and Arthur Bryant was not the first to recognise its bay as ‘the loveliest in England’. Eton College used to send its scouts to Tyneham for their annual summer camp. The Times photographed the harvest here in August 1929, and spread the Baldwinite result – a ...”

“... with many finely discriminated senses, as the SOED helpfully makes clear. And whereas persons of little culture might plump for SOED 5 (‘to desire, wish for’) in its post-1706 usage, Willetts is evidently much attached to the original Middle English usage of SOED 4: ‘to suffer the want of; to need, require; to stand in need of (something salutary, but ...”

“... Dr O’Brien is mistaken about this and would have realised his mistake if he had travelled a little in the Arab world and talked to a few more Arabs. It’s a strange sort of siege when the garrison frequently attacks the besiegers and is never attacked itself. Since 1967, Israel has attacked or invaded six Arab countries ...”

“... of the French Revolution. Eastern palaces had been transformed into graveyards and, in Volney’s little book, ruins became teaching aids in a series of lectures on the sinfulness and transience of tyranny. Robert Hillenbrand’s meditations on Eastern ruins may similarly lead his readers to thoughts of mortality and transience. Many of the buildings he ...”

“... are allies, collaborators, members of a self-selecting elite or avant-garde; and yet there is very little interaction between them. None of the figures touches his neighbour; they may abut, overlap, hide behind one another, but there is no contact between them. It is almost as if they can’t wait for the sitting (and the standing) to be over, so that they may ...”