“... corroborated some long-held suspicion’. The change could be disturbing for old acquaintances. Margaret Gardiner, who met Auden in the 1950s for the first time since before the war, was shocked at ‘his face … unimaginably creased and craggy’: ‘it took me some time to rediscover the young face I had known beneath this new mask. Then the two merged ...”

“... less adept at poetry? Why some uses of words rather than others? What is the point in interviewing Margaret Drabble, Victoria Glendinning and Marina Warner, but failing to discuss such matters? Yet for all the evident faults and the egregious condescension of this book, it does almost despite itself have some value. The women interviewed confirm yet again that ...”

“... two together is enough to show the strength of the one, the weakness of the other. Mrs Gaskell’s Margaret, as unhappy, as out-of-water as Grace, is able by determination to help herself, and, not least, by helping other people. Grace can flicker into life only when her heart is touched: yes, she has wondered whether to try social work as her sad friend Norah ...”

“... to fall. Lots of other people had seen Hanratty in Rhyl, in much more convincing circumstances. Margaret Walker, who lived in the street behind the guest-house, had made a statement to the police during the trial but had not been called to give evidence. She was absolutely certain that on the evening of 22 August a young man looking like Hanratty had come ...”

“... had no chair of governors, despite legal stipulations. But the school prospectus listed Alan Lewis, a former deputy chair of the Conservative Party, as its ‘executive patron’, and the leaked EFA report concludes that he had been the ‘chair of governors between September 2011 and October 2012’. Lewis also rented ...”

“... book), Malcolm’s central argument is simple enough. Long before the acknowledged masterpieces of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, long before the English reached their nonsensical apogee in the reign of Victoria, a few privileged Elizabethans were already developing a surreal and proto-Carrollean sense of humour, cultivated most often in the elaborately ...”

“... are out. He loved and was loved by his wife, and in a cruel accident she died. He quotes C.S. Lewis very aptly: ‘Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolation of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t ...”

“... book, incidentally, appeared only six years ago; and ‘thick and fast they come at last,’ like Lewis Carroll’s oysters.) Robert Alter has not followed her example, but instead takes time to discuss the major works from the point of view of content, style, technique etc, when he reaches that point in Stendhal’s life at which they were written. This ...”

“... artistic success.’ Neither Wood nor Hepworth suffered such illusions. Hepworth told her friend Margaret Gardiner that from an early age she had realised that the artist must ‘think out a policy, stick to it and then devote oneself to work quite ruthlessly’. No one who thinks such worldly ambition unseemly in an artist will be disappointed by the story ...”

“... of aspiring young poets and playwrights – and afterwards at the Adelphi Theatre in London by Lewis Casson, husband of the young Sybil Thorndike: he was producing a series of short Grand Guignol plays, and she saw herself in the melodramatic role of the eldest sister. The interest of The Sisters’ Tragedy, the idea for which Hughes had probably picked up ...”

“... in a gathering political night. The politics indeed are unpredictable, as politics always are. Margaret Thatcher may, despite herself, fail to maintain her pretence of leadership. Neil Kinnock may, despite himself, take over. David Owen may come out of his increasingly conservative camouflage to capture that middle ground on which success in British ...”

“... Part of this is the result of her meeting and falling in love with Henry ‘Simba’ Lewis, a renowned lion hunter. After his death, it is apparent that the lion which threatens the safari camps always stops and walks towards Millie. Attempts to shoot this lion fail. Stalking exasperates the tempers of all the members of the team except ...”

“... fine to avoid being ‘well whipped’. Marshfield was more fortunate than the quarrelsome midwife Margaret Jones, who had been hanged for witchcraft on Boston Common in June 1648, or the servant Mary Johnson, pregnant with an illegitimate child, who was condemned six months later, having confessed to ‘familiarity with the devil’. In the years following ...”

“... own houses.In the face of this insanity, a test case was brought by the ‘Stonehenge Two’, Margaret Jones and Richard Lloyd, who had been charged with ‘trespassory assembly’. It reached the House of Lords in 1999, where it was decided in their favour on the basis that the right to use the public highway for any reasonable purpose was ‘an issue of ...”

“... of oppressive respectability. Some instances of slumming can, of course, be furnished: C. Day Lewis was free to write detective fiction under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake and so not soil the reputation of the serious poet. Pseudonymy is essentially a disguise, a device for throwing readers off the scent. For absolute security’s sake the choice of ...”