“... the book is constructed in a series of emotional confrontations, the chapters being given (as in Henry James’s ‘dramatic’ novel, The Awkward Age) the names of the leading actors in each, and the ‘awkward age’ being in this case nearer 67 than 17. The plot concerns retirement and homecoming, ending and reconciliation, and the Welsh setting as Amis ...”

“... of Feliks Topolski naturally found him a good subject, as did the heroic sculptural instincts of Henry Moore, who drew Auden’s skin from memory on hearing of his death – ‘the monumental ruggedness of his face, its deep furrows like plough marks crossing a field’. Probably the most beautiful and attentive drawing had been done five years earlier by ...”

“... endorsement from the Australian Bicentennial Authority, and does not carry the ABA’s ubiquitous green and gold logo; the historians were, in fact, refused support from that source. They were attempting a generally progressive and innovative, open kind of history, social-democratic in general intent, however the writers’ positions might vary from ...”

“... mighty depths below. Clare is thought of as a marginal, provincial poet, who inhabited a remote green world of heath, woodland, riverbank and marshland, but Bate draws attention to the richness of the cultural life around him. Stamford, to the northwest of Helpston, just over the county border into Lincolnshire, was no backwater. Books were published ...”

“... good story.It is a very good story.One source for the title is revealed in an epigraph, taken from Henry VI Part III: ‘Come la civetta quando di giorno compare’ (‘Like the owl by day’). It sounds like a portent, a symbol of wisdom bringing dark truths to light, but the Shakespearean context piles on the irony. Halfway through Act V, the Duke of ...”

“... 1910 and located two-thirds of the way between Brondesbury and Kilburn Station and Willesden Green Station on the Metropolitan Line. This was one of several neighbourhoods in North-West London to which prospering Jews tended to migrate from East London in the 1920s and 1930s, the most notorious being Golders ...”

“... from Arthur’s Seat to the Highland Church and on to the Castle Rock. Motherly, rounded, green and tender are the great Pentland hills, Caerketton and Allermuir, watching over Gilmerton and Straiton and the city beyond.In another sense, though, Edinburgh did adopt him. His talents took him to the Royal High School, where William Drummond, ...”

“... we have shrugged it off. Russell thought that the holism which Dewey took over from Hegel and T.H. Green made it impossible for Dewey to tell us ‘about the nature of things before they are inquired into’. It does indeed. From Dewey’s angle, such a request is like asking to be told about how things are without using any particular description of ...”

“... racked by the notion that he may not be free to follow his calling.He was standing in a tip-tilted green field among his native mountains, and he was trying to give consolation to a young man who was being torn in two before his eyes by the desire to go and the necessity to stay. He was trying to forge a new Will in that devout and exhausted priest; and the ...”

“... from one of his fellow victims the story of how, in order to induce a good mood in a visiting Henry Kissinger, the Soviet leadership dresses two other ‘volunteers’ up in bearskins to pose as easy targets for their guest to bag. Failing to hit them even at close range, an enraged Kissinger falls upon one ‘bear’, wounds it mortally with a knife ...”

“... of the prisoners needed to go to the native hospital. As Keyen’s condition worsened, the DC, Henry Izard, was ‘pulled out of the Club’ to record his dying deposition; the Selwyns were also present.Helen Selwyn’s trial would focus on a matter of fact and a matter of judgment. Why did Keyen die on 25 June, from what causes, immediate and remote? And ...”

“... kept a ‘black oak shop’ in Dublin.) William fully acknowledged his illegitimate son, known as Henry Wilson, who became a doctor, working closely with his father, and wrote the first book in English on ophthalmoscopy. Even at the height of Victoria’s rule, the Wildes and Butt were able to flout the rules of sexual morality, thanks in part to their ...”

“... is one of the innumerable riffs in Stein which show off her love of discriminations – as though Henry James’s intelligence has acquired a manic style – but it’s also a demonstration of an unstated theory. According to this theory, all artistic work needs to be placed within its properly domestic sphere. ‘I began with Fernande and then there were ...”

“... scarcely read the newspapers, relying on a press summary prepared for her by her spokesman Henry James, a career civil servant who had worked for both Heath and Wilson and was as grave and imposing a figure as his literary namesake. When James was succeeded by Bernard Ingham, who had worked for Barbara Castle, presentation certainly hotted up. Ingham ...”

“... few stray bons mots about the monarchy, some connection with the Economist (which keeps his memory green in the pseudonym of a regular columnist) – that is as much as most of us can dredge up. What precisely was he great as: essayist, critic, economist, political analyst? Well, not really any of them under a rigorous definition of those trades, but a bit of ...”