“... David Benedictus is the Editor of Readings for BBC Radio’s Book at Bedtime. His Sunny Intervals and Showers is ill-suited for late-night reading, since it is not good to have the mind quickened from torpor by such speculations as ‘What happened to all the water in Noah’s Flood?’ or ‘Can the beatings of a butterfly’s wings start a typhoon?’ or, on a more practical level, ‘Could I have dealt with a mischievous fireball in the kitchen as summarily as that (unnamed) Smethwick housewife who “courageously sent it packing, and suffered nothing more serious than a burnt frock”?’ Still less does it assist slumber to reflect on the implications of that 1990 Sun headline (surely the longest Sun headline ever written) which said: ‘Britain has gone sex-crazy as red-hot lovers rush to do it in the great outdoors, say experts ...”

“... indirect style, but his slightly stagey horror at the likely excesses of the first-person mode may nonetheless strike a chord with readers of a variety of free-running or confessional forms, not just novels (think Christmas circular letters). But what about autobiography or memoir? Surely here self-revelation is of the essence. Yet James’s stricture ...”

“... A total loser – no clue!’ Such a reputation takes a lot of preserving. Orwell, in short, may have become more important as a symbol than for anything he actually wrote. Both of these books seek to reverse that suspicion, one by tethering the symbol to some distinctly fallible human flesh, the other by subjecting Orwell’s political prose to the kind ...”

“... Abersychan ethic is an ethic of exam-passers: an ethic of those who know, however elegantly they may disguise their knowledge, that the road to success is paved with alphas. For most of his time at Balliol, Jenkins devoted most of his energies to the Union and the extraordinarily convoluted politics of the Labour and democratic socialist clubs. But halfway ...”

“... been a feature of his work from the beginning return with renewed force in the Pisan Cantos. He may also have been struck by the several occasions in Walden on which seasonal change provides an unrealising change in point of view: The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ...”

“... by the systematic application of the guidelines. But in determining whether this is true, it may not be the best strategy to listen only to the judges, for it should come as no surprise that judges, just like carpenters, police officers, customs officials and university professors, are hardly the best judges of the frequency and magnitude of their own ...”

“... and the epilogue is placed at the front of the book, before the main text even begins. This may be a Lutyens-like joke: but such lack of concern for proportion and arrangement seems peculiarly out of place, given the subject of the book. Most of the dwellings described here were not so much country houses as houses in the country: rustic retreats for ...”

“... light, steadfast in serene strength like a god’. Such personifications, all positive and happy, may seem too soft-focused. Sometimes the rhapsodies cloy: ‘Glaciers came down from heaven, and they were angels with folded wings, white wings of snowy bloom. Locked hand in hand the little spirits did nobly’ (letter of 1871 to Mrs Carr). Or again, from his ...”

“... are commonly brought up to show that the modernist impetus survived in the generation after Pound: David Jones, Anglo-Welshman; Basil Bunting, Northumbrian Englishman; and Hugh MacDiarmid, Lowland Scot. The claim for Jones seems the weakest: it is advanced by Jones’s admirers, not by the poet himself, who took no interest in the question, having other fish ...”

“... quest for national self-determination; nor will Israelis concede that Zionism, however good it may have been for the Jews, has inflicted great suffering on the Arabs of Palestine and still continues to do so. Conversely, the Palestinians have so far been entirely unable to reconcile themselves to Zionism as a genuine movement of Jewish national ...”

“... individualism to an imperial appetite and the project of continental expansion. Turner’s insight may sound like common sense: once the last frontier has closed, Americans will have to teach themselves how to live, and at just that point the New World will cease to be new. But we have never come to that point, says Fisher. He is pretty sure we never will. And ...”

“... it the wealthiest club in the world, or at least the club with the wealthiest backers, which may not be the same thing. None of these teams has needed to move to follow the money. Instead, the money has come to them. What these new owners seem to want from English football is a stake in a glamorous and dynamic business with vast global appeal. This means ...”

“... and drunkenness are unlikely to be tolerated (how they will be policed is another matter). Beer may be the drug of choice at men’s football matches in Europe and Latin America, but having experienced the collective euphoria of watching England’s women winning the European Championships at Wembley this summer without encountering a single drunk or ...”

“... that none was as important as was once thought seems a curiously myopic way to proceed. Railways may not have been ‘indispensable’: but they were still, apparently, more important than any other single ‘factor’ mentioned in this book. The heroic events may not have been typical: but, as the cover eloquently ...”

“... George recorded. Some, of course, felt the same about Clarence. His intended consort was Princess May of Teck, a royal in a million, who it was hoped would pull him together. On his premature (and extremely fortunate) demise, she married Prince George instead. The rest of his life was a succession of such fantasy worlds. Both Alexandra and her daughter ...”