“... Margaret is in the foreground, spotlit, while behind her Glenconner’s life plays out with such self-effacing matter-of-factness that it takes time for the reader to realise that of these two intertwined biographies Glenconner’s is by far the more remarkable. The book is not, as a whole, what the publishers have made it appear – another gossipy ...”

“... reminds us of the benign image the English have cultivated of themselves, achieving a peak of self-love in the early 20th century. Stanley Baldwin’s St George’s Day speech of 1924: ‘I think that the English are at heart and in practice the kindest people in the world.’ Or George Orwell in ‘England Your England’: ‘The gentleness of the ...”

“... trigender, agender, intergender, pangender, neutrois, third gender, androgyne, two-spirit, self-coined, genderfluid. In 2011 the New York-based journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues brought out a special issue on transgender subjectivities. ‘In these pages,’ the psychoanalyst Virginia Goldner wrote in her editor’s note, ‘you will meet persons who ...”

“... values their multiple identities (faith, cultural and British). This will contribute to nurturing self-esteem and self-confidence, forming the basis for understanding and appreciation for the heritage and beliefs of others.’ Of course there will be clashes and conflicts, but when they come up you try to resolve them with ...”

“... and nobody must know of my plan: secrecy would be an insurance against failure. But the harder my self-imposed task proved to be, the nearer it might come to filling that blank. Don’t tell a soul. Just do it. Soon, then, every evening after work at the office, my formerly reluctant steps from the Underground station to the empty flat would be impelled by a ...”

“... cut deals with American oil companies to assure the latter’s independence of London, he died a self-declared socialist – who never hesitated to advocate unpopular causes in his own country – under secure Saudi protection. The figure of the British enthusiast for the cause of an oppressed people abroad goes back to Byron in Greece. Lawrence and ...”

“... like tents, and journeys beginning to the new camping grounds of sickness, disability, loss of self. In the next bay I hear a man – a son perhaps, himself elderly – talking to an older woman: their voices cultured, civil, tired, the voices of people who’ve had their time. ‘You’ll have to go to residential now,’ he says. ‘To that place we ...”

“... with some 15 million Britons enjoying a week away from home – if only at a Butlin’s camp or a self-catering hotel in Blackpool – in 1939. Some leisure activities still correlated with gender: men owned most of the more than one million private motor cars on the road by 1930 and placed most of the millions of daily bets (gambling accounted for 5 per cent ...”

“... than the false ornamentations, the stifling social dishonesties of the censored, conformist, self-deceived world of the last of the Kaisers und Königs. The results were certainly disconcerting. F.R. Leavis recounted in his memoir a number of examples of what one might take to be Wittgenstein’s rudeness and arrogance, yet Leavis was careful to say that ...”

“... anything criminal, and he wasn’t charged. Still, the local authorities don’t look kindly on self-styled clerics who turn up in the country, particularly when they meddle in local affairs, and Awlaki ended up in a dungeon in the political security prison in Sana’a. This prison spell was a gift from Allah, and bound Awlaki much more tightly to his ...”

“... Loi Taubira has at times been absurdly parochial, a combination of French obstinacy, pomposity and self-flagellation. In 2006, after the repeal of a law that had alluded to the ‘positive effects’ of colonisation, a group of deputies from Jacques Chirac’s ruling party unsuccessfully demanded the repeal of the Loi Taubira’s second article in the name of ...”

“... Literature, A History of English Prosody, The English Novel, A History of the French Novel and, self-referentially, books about books about books – A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day, A History of English Criticism. In late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, he was the supreme arbiter of literary ...”

“... of historians being content merely to stick one source after another, now seems very largely a self-serving myth. It did not require the birth of narratology or the return to fashion of ‘grand narrative’, to realise that historical narration is always selective and always posing questions about the evidence. No history – not even the most austere ...”

“... Whatever her feelings, she maintained her silence. Yet she was not without defenders. Dickens’s self-vindications generated a tumult of gossip and speculation. Thackeray wrote to his mother: ‘There is some row about an actress in the case, and he denies with the utmost infuriation any charge against her or himself … It is agreed they are to part … To ...”

“... they are both virgins, in their final weeks of school, on the cusp of everything. But they are self-aware and self-doubting in a way the older characters are not, and with this comes a greater degree of honesty as well as humour. The scene where Connie nearly loses her virginity is one of the best in the book. Her aunt ...”