“... at work beneath the surface of Tony Blair’s Christian Socialism, a line which descends via F.D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley. Blair contrives to put an upbeat spin on his ‘muscular Christianity’ (‘tough’ is his favoured term) but the essence of Carlylism is gloom, its energy, as Heffer stresses, the perverse recklessness of despair. ‘Pessimist ...”

“... of the Commission’s lack of accountability, therefore, national governments are not that keen to change things. The idea of a President of the Commission with a democratic mandate would appal them. The recent alliance between the European Parliament and national governments over the Santer debacle promises to be short-lived: the European Parliament ...”

“... of Catholics. He was fluent in French – he wrote a biography of Voltaire – and was always keen to explore cultural difference, whether between east and west, France, England, Scotland or the Netherlands. He spent two years in Edinburgh studying medicine, and perhaps a year in Leiden, before setting off on his own version of a grand tour, travelling on ...”

“... be unmarked by conscious virtuosity or literary influence, there are unmissable hints that he is keen to position it within a sophisticated tradition. Take ‘The Boat’, written in the late 1960s, one of several stories whose theme is the essential unknowability of the people we are related to. The teller of this tale is the teenage son of Cape Breton ...”

“... a chapter on Elizabeth Anscombe does not get beyond superficialities. The ‘too little read’ Maurice Baring will remain so. If McDonagh had broadened her gaze from the tormented lodestars of the Catholic literary revival and included more of the (sometimes justifiably) obscure women writers than she does, the convert’s lot would look more domestic and ...”

“... monarchy to explain the way the pressures of the First World War remade his dynasty. Although keen to establish the king as a player in wartime decision-making, most notably when he was championing Douglas Haig, Jones sees his contribution as having less to do with what he did than with his status, which made him the object of generous patriotic ...”

“... of the necessary conditions of bringing up healthy children’, as Major General Sir Frederick Maurice put it. Declining birth rates, rising infant mortality and anxieties about securing the empire focused government attention on the new ‘science’ of mothercraft.The early decades of the 20th century saw the rise of a culture of expertise around child ...”

“... himself ‘honoured and awed’ to be standing in Arnold’s place. Like Arnold, he is ‘keen on Celtic poetry’ and concludes his lecture by quoting in full Eilis Dillon’s translation of Eileen O’Connell’s famous 18th-century Gaelic poem, ‘The Lament for Arthur O’Leary’. In a bizarre critical judgment which might be seen as a form of ...”

“... front’.Carey is excellent at sketching biographies, quoting judiciously and generously, and keen to be explanatory without being patronising: you can see in the use of anecdote and analogy the experience of years lecturing to drifting undergraduates. (The Elizabethans fretted about whether or not they were damned, he explains at one point, rather like ...”

“... Macron acknowledged France’s responsibility in the murder of the pro-independence militant Maurice Audin, a communist mathematician who was ‘disappeared’ in 1957 – but passed over in silence in the extrajudicial murders of FLN leaders such as Ali Boumendjel and Larbi Ben M’hidi, who were ‘suicided’ in French custody during the Battle of ...”

“... refused to allow Maria to practise professionally; Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun was only too keen for his wife to sell her work so that he could pocket the proceeds; and whatever happened in Kauffman’s brief first marriage was so upsetting that she was never able to talk about it. Her late second marriage was to a much older man who had been chosen by ...”

“... To the emigrant, who is by definition always out of place and denied home, this sense is always keen, and is often passed on to the second generation.’ But he is also conscious that he may himself embody a sweeping moment in history. He draws on Eric Hobsbawm, who recognised that this change – ‘the death of the peasantry’ – is ‘perhaps the most ...”

“... Kingsman, the pre-1914 welfare economist A.C. Pigou, whose lack of interest in ideology and keen interest in young mountaineers was supposedly deliberate cover enabling him to suborn those politically committed to the left. (As will be seen, King’s has a tradition of involvement with the Secret Service: Sir Francis Walsingham ran it for Elizabeth ...”

“... Mattias Habich as Yudishthira is a flaxen-haired Dürer knight searching for the true path; Maurice Benichou, who is French but of a North African Jewish family, has Mediterranean ease and a childlike gravity as Krishna; Alain Maratrat as Vyasa the poet has the Ancient Mariner authority of a Breton or Welsh bard; the British actor Bruce Myers as ...”

“... the other connection he is refusing is that of the fictional don Sillery with the historical Maurice Bowra. But then Powell adds that rereading his own novels ‘brought Malcolm to mind more than once in case of Bagshaw, quite involuntary on my part’. Bagshaw is ‘not in the front rank of literary critics’, indeed we are told ‘there might have ...”