“... Spenser’s heavy pace and patches of opacity with the more athletic movement of Ariosto. C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, thought the whole poem moved along pretty briskly. Other critics, without necessarily denying either view, waste their lives, though they may also secure tenure, in trying to explain just what is really going on in Spenser’s ...”

“... knew that. Have you come far?’ ‘Only from Westminster, maam.’ ‘And you are …?’ ‘Norman, maam. Seakins.’ ‘And where do you work?’ ‘In the kitchen, maam.’ ‘Oh. Do you have much time for reading?’ ‘Not really, maam.’ ‘I’m the same. Though now that one is here I suppose one ought to borrow a book.’ Mr Hutchings smiled ...”

“... letters, telegrams, personal expostulations and, above all, telephone calls – what the late Sir Lewis Namier called ‘the terror by telephone’. He was himself a skilled operator of this weapon and claimed to have reduced more than one critic of Zionism to a nervous breakdown. The only safe course is never, never, never to have any opinion about the ...”

“... During or just after the last war it was Connolly and Koestler and Spender, William Plomer, Alun Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Peter Quennell. Some still have life or fame or both, some not: but then, not now, was their moment. Was Connolly himself any good as a writer? The question means little because the point of Connolly turned out to be Connolly not producing ...”

“... to serious non-fiction, from the days of André Maurois’s romanticised version of Shelley to Norman Mailer’s pastiche of Marilyn Monroe, have seemed more dubious. With Peterley Harvest there was an additional problem because, unlike recent fictional diaries such as Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg 1933-1948, or fictional ...”

“... with the question of whether the historic free constitution of the Anglo-Saxons had survived the Norman Conquest and feudalism. Did the ancient constitution persist into the present, as Whig antiquaries contended, or was there a feudal discontinuity in the course of English history, as argued by royalists and Tories? The debate that had most purchase on ...”

“... seem silly. You could, of course, draw a contrast simply in terms of range of Bad Moments covered: Norman Mailer has preferred to steer clear of the peculiar pains of childbirth, and Andrea Dworkin has chosen not to dwell on the distinctive horror an uneasy Christmas dinner can become, while Byatt can and has handled both as elements in her continuing series ...”

“... but it would be honest. The recent past is not the only sufferer in this book. Professors Lewis, Kedourie and Vatikiotis come on stage to tell us that Islam is in effect a terrorist religion and that the term ‘Islamic terrorists’ is therefore legitimate. Elie Kedourie even says that ‘the old history’ of Islamic terrorism ‘will serve to ...”

“... research and referencing, to argue that a version of primitive communism had existed before the Norman invasion of the 12th century. He also made use of the ideas of European and North American anthropologists and historians such as Charles Letourneau, Lewis Henry Morgan and Henry Maine, who suggested that common ...”

“... scholars who deny that what took place was a genocide as legally defined include Bernard Lewis, Stanford Shaw, David Fromkin, Justin McCarthy, Guenther Lewy, Norman Stone, Michael Gunter, Andrew Mango, Roderic Davison, Edward Erickson and Steven Katz, and although all of them have had dealings with Turkish academic ...”

“... in the history of Zionism, including the period just before the birth of the state described in Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ and David Cesarani’s Major Farran’s Hat. Both books deal with the last years of the Mandate, when the rightist nationalists of the Irgun and the Stern Gang waged a fierce campaign against British forces and the ...”

“... my entire top shelf, or cupboard-top, of books: Ian McEwan’s First Love, Last Rites, Junkie, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Lolita, books which I had lovingly collected from jumble sales and Oxfam shops, and which I now had a strong sense were somehow ‘wrong’. We’d done ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ for O-level English, so that stayed. Nineteen ...”

“... examples and rejects the familiar theory that this poetic corpus, under the shadow of the Norman Conquest, mourns the impending death of the language itself. He concentrates instead on a set of posthumous laments, in which a Soul castigates its buried Body for the sins that led to its present misery. Body is silent now, its tongue decayed in the crypt ...”

“... of the period when, she points out, England and France formed a single cultural entity) in Anglo-Norman and French. What was going on during the same period in Italy, Germany or Spain falls outside the scope of Cooper’s inquiry. More puzzling is the omission of certain classical Greek and Latin texts influential in the romance tradition with which she is ...”

“... The Archers on Radio 4, so I’m out of touch. I read in the papers that Phil Archer, or at least Norman Painting, who played him, died recently, but is Jill still around? Where’s Shula? What’s with Eddie Grundy? Old Walter Gabriel must be long gone, but what happened to his scapegrace son, Nelson? Are the village shop and post office still open, or does ...”