“... modern sensibility.’ He cannot get over the idea of Thomas’s modern sensibility (whatever that may be exactly) and uses the phrase three times more in the same chapter. And his language becomes positively untrained: Thomas is ‘exquisitely sincere and sensitive’; his poems ‘seem to happen’. Yet as soon as he gets on to the Sitwells the cogency and ...”

“... such old words As I know you know. Inside the poem itself, the epigram as ‘two-line squib’ may rear its head as the poet’s own words address him: Just as I was swearing to abjure them all: ‘Perhaps you should say something A bit more interesting than what you mean.’ But even that piece of self-mockery escapes the epigram’s natural inclination ...”

“... Lives Matter, Covid-19 restrictions and most recently the Israel-Hamas war suggest this decade may be just as tumultuous. Yet many governments are restricting the right of assembly. The trend is unsurprising among authoritarians who have abandoned any pretence of toleration (think of Putin after the invasion of Ukraine or Beijing’s clampdown in Hong Kong ...”

“... from within.Dissent from outside Israel, meanwhile, has been toothless. Arab and European capitals may have been angry at Israel’s bombings in Gaza and condemned its policy of starvation, yet their concrete actions amounted to little more than very restricted sanctions. Trade and travel between Israel and Europe have continued freely, as has the flow of most ...”

“... the early 1890s, the ‘Norfolk Holbein’ was rarely out of the news in the spring of 1909. On 3 May 1909, the painter Philip Burne-Jones noted in a letter to the Times that if the painting should ‘find a home in America … its days are practically numbered … No painting can survive many years in the overheated atmosphere of American rooms or ...”

“... You will hardly ever hear them in a concert hall or church service. Art-house concerts may feature the secular music of the medieval period, attractively informal in style and presentation, but this volume of essays is largely about sacred music and there is nothing informal about that, or about the academics who have devoted their careers to ...”

“... academics. And, like Sandra, you might be eulogised by someone who barely knew you: ‘She may not have been graceful eating with a knife and fork; her clothing may have been all stretch fabrics, but she is dead. Died alone in a toilet. No sense of personal style and an unusual amount of flyaway hairs, but …’ In ...”

“... glamour status which has been bestowed upon its upstart urban neighbour. In popular terms, this may be because of the very different relationship which these two subjects have with contemporary perceptions of the urban and the rural environment. For the many who spurn and despise the city, and regard urbanisation as a cultural and environmental ...”

“... in 1975), then his abilities should receive their just acknowledgment. Conversely, of course, Dahl may simply be on to a good thing which others might try: Charlie, he says, ‘grew from being a bedtime story told to my children’. Its eponymous hero, Charlie Bucket, lives in extreme poverty with his father, his mother and his four bed-ridden grandparents. He ...”

“... and familiar, like the invention of printing or (once again) the effect of epidemics, and some may regard this as a display of fireworks: to me, it looks like decorated oversimplification of a rather scary kind. Perhaps aware of dangers of this kind, the inaugural lecture of 1973, with which the volume opens, resorts to the use of jargon ...”

“... its composer’s world view. The two hands, however, are so different from each other that one may doubt whether theirs is the same trunk: great music expresses religious facts – or, if you like, metaphysical truths – which words really can’t; whereas words express political facts which music, let’s face it, can’t. Eisler, his biographer, and ...”

“... resides more in the successful treatment of sows’ ears than in an appeal to silk purses may seem obvious enough. In China, it preceded Mao, and will survive him. But in the Soviet Union it has yet to reach the department in the Kremlin where publishing decisions are taken. Lesley Chamberlain, whose Food and Cooking of Russia suggests that she spent ...”

“... after these interviews, circling around even the last of his decisions. With his death at 92 on a May afternoon in 1979 in the wards of the Vienna Psychiatric Hospital – and with the passing of the Master’s daughter in London this autumn – one perhaps has the right to feel, for the first time, that a current which was once part of the air we breathe ...”

“... programme that leaves strange bruises around the genitals of middle America, though spooky, may be just about preferable to the very real fight in Ireland over who owns your insides. ‘Get your rosaries off our ovaries’ was the battle cry, but the pro-life louts are still hanging around the Dublin streets, with their short hair and jars full of dead ...”

“... data about current or mooted changes, and one can see that from within the charmed circle they may well look like a state of ferment. To the world outside, however, I doubt whether it would make a ha ’p’ orth of real difference if all the current criticisms were accepted and all the reforms implemented. This is not only because what is going on is ...”