“... out of London. In his journal, written on the empty pages of an old bankbook, he notes that on 23 May 1826 he walked to school: ‘Old Monk drinks like a fish.’ At 14 he feels it is ‘high time for me to be learning some trade or profession’, and at 15 he is alone at his father’s deathbed, holding ‘the cold clammy hand’. At 16 he ships for ...”

“... unaware of just how much like each other they actually are.’ No sycophant, then, no courtier, it may seem odd that he is so persistently fascinated by royalty. It is, of course, not an unusual taste, as the publication of Lady Longford’s entertaining scrapbook abundantly testifies.* She gives us, for example, the full story of the Daily Express’s scoop ...”

“... looking at the country. When one does look, as Fanny Eden does, the only honest initial response may be of puzzlement, a puzzlement which, if expressed wittily and intelligently, as it is here, can be more illuminating than certainties and absolute conclusions. Fanny Eden – sister of the novelist and writer about India, Emily – travelled to the Rajmahal ...”

“... that one can’t hope to tell the truth in an autobiography, that the very desire to write one may be proof of an incapacity to do so veraciously. In any case there is likely to be a conflict between the writer’s wish to make sense of his or her life, and the need to cut, however modestly, a figure of interest to readers. Only people stupid and ...”

“... behaving as you do. It can be put down in few enough words, however far-reaching its implications may be. My belief is that you are experimenting with us. It must be so. No other explanation has any real plausibility. Look at what you do. You pick me up, you put me down, you make me turn left, turn right, turn left again, and then you reward me with a morsel ...”

“... that Egypt and its people have provided for the past several centuries. Palestinians or Iraqis may level damaging political accusations at Egypt’s governments, but they never fail to acknowledge the country’s charm and the pleasures of its clipped, lilting dialect. In all that Tahia stood quite alone, and not altogether despite her flaws and often ...”

“... to need such things in order to survive, and they are apt to develop a life of their own which may be as important as electoral or ministerial history. The election landslide of 1945 has (not surprisingly) been a constant source of inspiration and refreshment to leaders and rank and file alike in the subsequent generation. Either as a latterday St ...”

“... and a multitude of cross-references. His book lacks a clear chronological structure. This may have been necessary to achieve his purposes, but it demands continuous sympathetic concentration from his readers. I suspect that not all of them will be prepared to grant him this. But no one could fail to be impressed by the many shafts of light which are ...”

“... to present, the picture of a cool, dispassionate and largely uncommitted observer. Mr Mortimer may see himself in this light, but few other people will so see him. For someone like him, it would have taken quite a feat of dissembling to achieve this result. A new party game could be played to determine which literary figures, living and past, could be ...”

“... political nationalism north of the Border, then the general election which followed it in May was surely the Culloden. The strident Scottish pibroch which had been played into British politics for ten years was suddenly overwhelmed by the resonance of Margaret Thatcher’s almost-Elizabethan and essentially Home Counties view of resurgent British ...”

“... In this collection of essays, he explains his choice. He got off a train at the Gare d’Orsay in May 1945, with others from the German camps, to discover that virtually no one he had known in 1939, including his family, was still alive. He wanted to come to terms with that experience and with what had led to it. He worked for a while to rehabilitate ...”

“... Cromwell gets 21 lines to himself plus a separate entry under Tudor Revolution in Government. This may indicate the administrative path to editorial favour, for A.V. Dicey’s academic writings on the 19th century state are rewarded with an entry of nine lines, the same as Lord John Russell who was merely in office at the time. This is three lines less than ...”

“... reading if it contained this episode alone. The last chapter, ‘Carbon’, sets forth what we may call the author’s philosophy or way of looking at the world, and acts as justification and framework for the somewhat uneven material which has preceded it. I should mention that, tucked in between the chronologically-ordered chapters of the life-history ...”

“... by outnumbering them. All the same, even if a way of life based exclusively upon the potato may be richer than Sir Charles Trevelyan suggests, when the root fails, all is lost. It is estimated that up to a million people died, either from starvation or from disease that came in the Famine’s wake. Emigration, to the United Status and also to ...”

“... but Kafka. Reviewing the South African writer Alex La Guma in the Edinburgh Review last May, Kelman called Kafka ‘the greatest realist in literary art of the 20th century. His work is a continual struggle with the daily facts of existence for ordinary people. Kafka’s stories concern the deprivation suffered by ordinary people ... whose daily ...”