“... A beautiful young woman, Isabel Archer, is pursued by three suitors: the dashing, reliable Lord Warburton; the dashing, demonic Gilbert Osmond; and a relentless, even fanatical American industrialist who is called not Boldwood, but Caspar Goodwood. James accused Hardy of having ‘little sense of proportion and almost none of composition’, but it can ...”

“... stories currently in circulation. Haldane’s dismissive manner later lost him his job as lord chancellor – when war was declared he was denounced as a German sympathiser and hounded from government – but in 1909, despite his misgivings and although the police hadn’t yet turned up a single suspect, he gave in to the popular outcry. He set up a ...”

“... to shoot big game, including wolves, a lynx and a polar bear, which were displayed in his home alongside the birds. Another bear he killed was stuffed and placed in the entrance hall of the Kennel Club, where he served as vice-president from 1899. By the time of his death, according to his diaries, Salter had bred 2123 dogs and owned 2696.They are ...”

“... jerkins and some old shirts’, which Saveer’s wife ‘threw away so soon as they were brought home’. Little Will met a man called Owen Gibbons, who agreed to help him with the gold, loading it onto his horse (later, no one could say where it had been taken).Most of the villagers seem to have been preoccupied with collecting the millions of loose raisins ...”

“... later called his ‘angel tyrant’, vowed to bring him up in ‘the nurture and admonition of the Lord’, with the emphasis on admonition. This she performed in the rectory at Herstmonceux (the castle had once been in the family), and Uncle Julius, the rector, was on hand to horsewhip the boy as required. Then two more aunts arrived to ensure that Augustus ...”

“... granddaughter could be proud of Bertie and Tap. But eventually Bertie’s dim son, David, became Lord Redesdale (his elder, grander brother having been killed in action) and David married Tap’s dim daughter, Sydney. David and Sydney did not know how to be Lord and Lady Redesdale: perhaps, as Highland Fling suggests, no ...”

“... searching for, but the others, the ones who actually inhabit the land’. Sydney is Lillian’s home town. She has returned to Australia after an unsatisfactory career in Europe, bolting from her husband and sons. Manly is her bolthole. (The title, no doubt, alludes to Last Exit for Brooklyn.) When she goes to parties in Sydney, she finds that ‘the men ...”

“... with the Egyptian ambassador’. Churchill’s publicity machine was often wildly insecure. When Lord Halifax was sent off as ambassador to the US, bogus baggage was placed on the Port Jackson at Liverpool to fool the Germans, and when it turned out that the Port Jackson wasn’t going to America, the baggage was transferred to the Warwick ...”

“... words ‘Man liveth not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.’ I think not too much to say that should you & I be silent & not set forth the praises of God through Jesus Christ that the stones and beams of our houses would sing hallelujah.The expressive power of the sequence derives not just from lyricism but from ...”

“... intervals firmly clasped in an Establishment embrace. Fifty or sixty years ago there would be a Lord Mayor’s banquet at the Guildhall, a reception given by the Speaker of the House of Commons, grand dinners in great houses, even a Royal Garden Party. Of course, nowadays the home church hosts – the ...”

“... Osborne and Balmoral were largely his inspiration. Balmoral has remained the favourite country home of British monarchs to the present day and Osborne became Victoria’s favourite in her latter years. Most leading politicians disapproved of Albert at first and then came to appreciate him. This was true even of Palmerston, who was at feud with the Prince ...”

“... At the end of August 1996 both my daughters left home to take up graduate scholarships in America. I knew that they would probably never again spend extended periods in my house, but persuaded myself that I had ‘coping strategies’ well in place. Within days of their departure I embarked on a more than usually expensive holiday, a Hellenic cruise ...”

“... Working​ in 2010 on a knotty judgment about the power of the home secretary to include additional criteria in immigration rules that she had previously laid before Parliament as required by statute, something clicked in my memory. Four centuries earlier, in 1611, in a decision known as the Case of Proclamations, it had been ruled that ‘the King by his proclamation or other ways cannot change any part of the common law, or statute law, or the customs of the realm … The King hath no prerogative, but that which the law of the land allows him ...”

“... to Honderich, and so is Iain Macleod. The most glaring exclusion of all, however, is that of Lord Hailsham. Honderich is aware of Hailsham’s existence since he makes a heavy joke about his trousers, which Honderich calls his undergarment, but he is evidently not aware of his books. With the leading post-war Tory thinker in politics thus consigned to ...”

“... of Carter’s Administration, was obvious. Poor Bert had got into trouble with his own bank at home in Georgia and owed about three million dollars. Abedi lent him the three million. It was never repaid of course, but the two men were firm friends for life. Another much more distinguished convert was Clark Clifford, the beautifully-spoken lawyer who had ...”