“... though their effect was at the time, are hilarious to read today. If read by Mrs Thatcher, they may tempt her to try her hand at reincarnation: this officer ‘has proved himself disloyal, his services should be dispensed with ... is old and decrepit and should go at once ... should be sent away to end his life in peace ... is quite unfit to be a ...”

“... sleep from which, it seems, we are only now beginning to wake up. The suspicion that Britain may not, after all, be unalterably the nicest of all possible modern states to live in grows as each day of Mrs Thatcher’s second term passes. There are signs, moreover, that we are beginning to lose our collective nerve, as witness the howls of remorse and ...”

“... both British Rail and the hotel industry. Those with established reputations, such as Dr Hutton, may be successful in obtaining support for this task, but how many books are simply not being written because their potential authors cannot afford the costs entailed? Logically, if not formally, this book divides into two parts, one dealing with the fall of ...”

“... enough, for she held little back. ‘I talk to you as you bid me, without reserve, for I think I may. I love you. I wish to have you for a friend. I wish to be yours.’ She fell in love with abandon and innundated him with letters that included pillow talk, often in French, as if to separate this relationship from her routine married life. There were no ...”

“... to control his wife, and that the Politburo was entirely powerless in this matter. Similarly, one may feel some sympathy with him in the last years of his life as he felt his power slip away amid growing signs of the ‘bourgeoisification’ of the new China, but it is difficult to understand why he allowed Jiang Quing to order a large public park in Beijing ...”

“... that none was as important as was once thought seems a curiously myopic way to proceed. Railways may not have been ‘indispensable’: but they were still, apparently, more important than any other single ‘factor’ mentioned in this book. The heroic events may not have been typical: but, as the cover eloquently ...”

“... two volumes, it had more in common with the style of the 18th century than the 20th century. We may in retrospect regard 1868 as the beginning of the period of adversary politics and the ‘swing of the pendulum’: a Conservative win in 1874, Liberals in 1880, a slight hiccup in 1885, but Conservatives back in 1886, Liberals in 1892, Conservatives in ...”

“... it is not surprising that its most contentious subjects are English and history. It may be said that there is nothing new in the existence of a national ideology to which most English schools subscribe – only that in the past this was largely hidden. In American schools prayers are forbidden, but all pupils have to repeat loyalty oaths and ...”

“... the nakedness of his wife. Genitals must be washed before and after intercourse. And in no case may a young man study religious law during the sexual act. Indeed if there are religious books in the bedroom, they must be carefully covered with two cloths before the woman enters. Sexual intercourse must take place on a bed with mattress, sheet and blanket ...”

“... about sound’. That Welles was a self-conscious tyrant was crucial to his achievement. It may also explain his ambivalence towards acolytes and admirers, what Thomson calls his ‘dread of the thing most desired’. ‘I’m a king actor,’ Welles admitted in a late interview, ‘maybe a bad one, but that’s what I am, you see. And I have to play ...”

“... word-perfect 20th-century Flauberts: Pritchett, Bellow, Updike, Nabokov – that even though there may be notes we don’t like in his writing, there are never false notes. And yet it is too obvious that Mike Hoolihan, however much (at long last) she ‘represents’ the female voice in Amis’s boyish fiction – and she is, curiously, one of the most ...”

“... by conflating it with inventive variants on more traditional forms of fantasy, of the kind we may associate with Hoffmann or Gogol. The man who loses his head has also met the devil an hour or so earlier – a busy day for a man described as being ‘unaccustomed to unusual happenings’. When one of the devil’s assistants says to a young woman that he ...”

“... you see it,’ and one obvious sign for it is a child who goes ‘wrong’. You and your mother may not agree about good mothering, but if you didn’t turn out all that well yourself, if you are an alcoholic, or have personality problems, if you are anorexic, or a juvenile delinquent, a killer, a schizophrenic, or if you died in your cot from Sudden Infant ...”

“... constitutional revolution’: ‘“we the people” – to use a long-coined phrase that may finally become currency in Britain – have changed, especially in our relationship to authority.’ The idea of the book is unobjectionable: it asks what last May’s General Election ‘really tells us; explores the ...”

“... literature, published a biography in 1971, which appeared in English in 1972. While Woodhouse may feel, with justice, that the earlier book lacks the scholarly rigour of his own, Jullian covers much of the same terrain, relies on many of the same sources and brings to the subject an attractive enthusiasm for and knowledge of the Decadent ...”