“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... most vividly in the extraordinary ten-year advance of the Scottish National Party under its Home Rule banner, but striking a strong chord, too, in Labour, Conservative and Liberal support for political devolution – seemed to exhibit all the ‘protean strength’ which has fascinated Rosalind Mitchison in the collection she has edited of essays on ...”

“... which no man can forecast.’ Thus Gladstone, unsuccessfully commending to the Commons the first Home Rule Bill, for Ireland, in 1886, a Bill which set the terms of discussion about major constitutional change in the United Kingdom and established categories which remain remarkably unchanged today, as we face up to Scottish and Welsh devolution. Gladstone ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... about Dr Runcie’s travels: Hasn’t it all got rather out of hand? A disintegrated church at home is not healed by fixing its gaze on distant shores and the residual politics of post-imperial times ... England stands at a disadvantage as compared with other components of the United Kingdom – with Scotland, Wales, even Ulster, though this is a more ...”