“... In an article on Arthur Koestler written in 1944, George Orwell suggested that the lack of imaginative depth in English political fictions, when these are compared with works of European origin, may be due to the fact that the English simply lack any experience of the totalitarian state: ‘The special world created by secret-police forces, censorship of opinion, torture and frame-up trials is, of course, known about and to some extent disapproved of, but it has made very little emotional impact ...”

“... was the Irish famine. In Sydney he grew up speaking the language of the oppressor. But as a young Catholic with a failure for a father he had one conspicuous advantage among his handicaps. He was educated by the Jesuits of Riverview, who even in my time were still making sure that their pupils got plenty of learning rammed into their heads along with ...”

“... Cupertino and Mountain View, who have begun (it is rumoured) to flutter Democratically about her. Young-Titan Tesla guys with entrepreneurial dream-teeth and a no doubt healthy obsession with other men.(They’re good boys at heart: their artisanal leather wallets are made from 100 per cent organic Niman Ranch grain-fed beef.) The rail-thin wives should be ...”

“... sitting by the fire during the damp Irish nights, he liked to tell us boys – my sister was too young to listen – anecdotes about Parnell, whom he admired; and tales of junks and pirates, in which he escaped from brigands or captured prizes. Such images were too vivid to last, their over-bright tints fading into the dimness of nursery-stories that ...”

“... in 1942. When Iseult finally rejected him in the summer of 1917, he decided to propose to a young Englishwoman, Georgie Hyde-Lees. He wrote to Lady Gregory: ‘I certainly feel very tired & have a great longing for order, for routine & shall be content if I find a friendly serviceable woman. I merely know – we had our talk alone two years ago – that ...”

“... Council is busy and full of students who only leave when it closes at 8 p.m., and seeing these young Italians reading English books and magazines, watching videos and generally finding this a worthwhile place to be is immensely heartening. The British Council can still be thought a bit of a joke but like the World Service it’s a more useful investment of ...”

“... persons, mainly marines, left England in May 1787 under the command of Captain (later Governor) Arthur Phillip, reaching Botany Bay nine months later. Finding the environment inclement, they promptly moved a little way along the coast to Sydney Cove, site of the later city. The French had also landed, and to establish a national presence the little British ...”

“... platitudes and a generalised sense that global conflict is the assault of the old on the young, the system on the individual, the powers that be on the little people. Trumbo relies on sledgehammer irony: ‘I used to be a consumer,’ Joe explains at one point, ‘I’ve consumed more shrapnel and gunpowder than any living man.’ He prefers ...”

“... Camelot for which its long history as a chosen land had been a preparation. This was a President, young, manly, determined and vigorous, who would work miracles. With the sons of Harvard and Yale at his feet, historians and intellectuals his companions and advisers, he would never negotiate out of fear, even at the risk of nuclear war, and never fear to ...”

“... Baudelaire. The first is that all degrees of seniority are obliterated in the desire to look as young, as carefree, as natural as possible. The second is that these unreconstructed dressers, although brought together for purposes of work, some of it extremely recondite, are dressed for play, both urban and rural, as it might be for busking or the tending of ...”

“... the interlinked stories of the two men who actually took humans into space: Wernher von Braun, the young SS officer at Peenemunde who dreamed of going to the Moon, watched slaves and prisoners perish in the making of the V-2 rocket, and then used his knowledge as a passport to fame and fortune in America. And Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who grew up in the ...”

“... later, Cranmer rammed through both houses of Convocation the declaration that Henry’s brother Arthur had ‘carnally known’ Catherine of Aragon and so Henry’s first marriage was unlawful and he was free to marry Anne Boleyn (which he had already done in secret). Within a week, the busy new archbishop had also rammed the Restraint of Appeals Bill ...”

“... rather than come to heel. So there was something to be said for the view of Philip Baker, a bright young Foreign Office official seconded to the commission (later, as Philip Noel-Baker, to win the Nobel Peace Prize), that ‘the PMC is the most enlightened and most progressive body the council has yet created.’ And the League itself had its merits. By Lake ...”

“... present in the early Sartor Resartus, lively and opaque by turns, a book which inspired the young and bewildered their elders. A devastating social critic over-impressed by heroes and dictators, Carlyle was humane and savage, radical and racist, an agnostic quoted by churchmen and praised as ‘a prophet in the midst of an untoward generation’ in Dean ...”

“... Essay on Man, and Spectator articles into Italian), and at 17 met her tutor and ‘first friend’ Arthur Collier, who taught her Latin and ‘formed my mind to resemble his’: ‘A Man who engrossed my whole Heart, & deserved it. Love (as it is falsely called) had no Share in the Connection, but nobody ever did feel more fond & true affection for ...”