“... Auden had gone to Berlin to study soon after he left Oxford. There he met the anthropologist John Layard, who showed him the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science. Auden also discovered the gay bars of Berlin. Through Layard he became acquainted with the revolutionary teachings of the American psychologist Homer Lane. Auden invited his friend ...”

“... is not a conventional history. It is not, for example, meant to compete with the standard work, John Ramsden’s volumes in the history of the Conservative Party, or with other histories which carry the story forward to the present day. It is rather an essay, or series of essays, on themes and issues with which Ian Gilmour was and is himself involved ...”

“... fiction of Paley’s neighbour and good friend Donald Barthelme. The gargantuan mock-epics of John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy, now little-read, were much praised at the time, and the ‘literature of exhaustion’ was the literature of the future – if there was a future for humanistic literature at all. Like a number of realist ...”

“... written records of disciples. From a purely literary point of view, Plato, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were more talented and conscientious than the scribes who compiled Confucius’ wisdom. Even if more people have read the Analects than Plato’s Dialogues or the Gospels, and even if its message has influenced more people than they have, it is inferior to ...”

“... were charged with wilful murder, but we are not told the outcome. Happier to relate, in 1801 John Newton, forty years a naval lieutenant, was paid off at Plymouth with the tribute that ‘never was there a more orderly set of men than the seamen and landmen in Newton’s service’ and recording that ‘the gallant veteran’ had raised three thousand ...”

“... as rational, calculable and rule-bound. The polarity operates clearly in an epigram coined by Sir John Davies in 1594: Publius, student at the common law, Oft leaves his books, and for his recreation, To Paris Garden doth himself withdraw, Where he is ravished with such delectation, As down among the bears and dogs he goes; Where, whilst he skipping ...”

“... and the language of convicts, solicitors and medics did find its way into the writing.’ In 1946, John Betjeman said that his ideal second occupation would be ‘station-master on a small country branch line (single track)’. And when writers now are questioned about second jobs, a similar wistfulness descends. Julian Barnes probably speaks for most of his ...”

“... Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950) is the most recognisable, though I prefer Myrtle Gordon in John Cassavetes’s Opening Night (1977). Myrtle, played by Gena Rowlands, is in the twilight of her career and bent on sabotaging the play for which she’s currently rehearsing. She drinks too much; is haunted by a woman with a striking resemblance to her ...”

“... grievances; an antipathy to supranational governance and political correctness. These John Bullish attitudes seem far removed from the polite Europhile paternalism we tend to associate with one-nation Conservatives.Johnson has some similar attitudes, and has a following of scary nationalists on the Tory right, but he is careful to keep a foot ...”

“... her ‘reckless rustle over depths and difficulties’, which was very like a man to think.)When John Blackwood, who was publishing Miss Marjoribanks in serial in his magazine, taxed Oliphant with making Lucilla too ‘hard’, she responded: ‘I have a weakness for Lucilla, and to bring a sudden change upon her character and break her down into tenderness ...”

“... For every Oscar Wilde, there were the 27 mostly anonymous men questioned in the early 1890s for John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion, who with delightful candour describe early experiences, favourite sexual positions and relationships past and present, the great majority of them expressing an easy acceptance of their ...”

“... other books – Meghan Daum’s The Problem with Everything; Laura Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances; John McWhorter’s Woke Racism – but Nelson is unusual in wanting to be read as a good-faith actor. She signals her allegiance to the etiquette of political correctness and believes in its values, but she thinks we should find a middle way, one that doesn’t ...”

“... matriarch of the Norfolk family famous for its collection of letters, reminded her husband, John, in 1451 that ‘paper is deynty,’ precious and not to be wasted. Da Rold makes a convincing case for its distinctive material qualities, and its prestige as an imported, even exotic commodity in England. There were expensive varieties, not just painted ...”

“... son.If I am driving that way, I see, just before the turn for Sandymount, the house of Count John McCormack, the great tenor who, in May 1904, encouraged Joyce to enter the competition in which he had won a gold medal the year before. Joyce flunked the sight-reading and came third. McCormack would go on to have thirteen Rolls-Royces and many houses. His ...”

“... a dividing line between the fiscal responsibility of our party and the reckless promises of John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn?’ Four years ago in these pages I warned that the government’s plans to bring down the headline debt figure through asset sales, including the sale of part of the student loan book, would mean a loss of millions of pounds to ...”