“... for the revolutionary naturalism of his acting style, notably his startling performance as Richard III. Garrick was elected to the Club in 1773; the playwrights Oliver Goldsmith and George Colman were already members and Richard Brinsley Sheridan would be admitted a few years later. The Club wasn’t just full of ...”

“... career (in his chapter on Marvell, Milton and Dryden) without reference to Lawrence Lipking or Richard Helgerson. The Forster-Dickens chapter makes no mention of the alternative line of Dickens biography that descends through Thomas Wright and Katherine Longley to our contemporaries Peter Ackroyd and Claire Tomalin. In his chapter on James Joyce Hamilton ...”

“... about the collapse of the tsarist autocracy nor even of the Provisional Government,’ Stephen Smith writes, in his sober, well-researched and comprehensive history. Sean McMeekin seconds this, affirming that ‘the events of 1917 were filled with might-have-beens and missed chances’ while at the same time tipping his hat to show who the intellectual ...”

“... its bibliophile vice-president, Gordon Ray) acquired the literary correspondence of the publisher Richard Bentley and Sons, principal purveyor of the three-decker novel to the Victorian reading public. At the same time, the British Library (with financial assistance from the Friends of National Libraries) took possession of most of Bentley’s ledgers and ...”

“... us to prosperity and liberty but at the price of atomising our picture of the world. The labourer, Smith writes, is ‘not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private ...”

“... a tale of flight, family separation and reunion scattered across the waters and cities of what Richard Halpern called ‘the decaying Hellenistic world’. At its core is the romance arc of a prince, Pericles (whose motto, In hac spe vivo, means ‘In this hope I live’), losing and then finding his wife and daughter: a wife seemingly buried at sea, but ...”

“... Itahad, or ‘Unity’. Al Itahad may be no threat to the Americans militarily, but according to Richard Dowden of the Independent it could become a rallying point for disaffected Somalis. The risk of Somalia falling to intemperate Islam – this has been a straw many have clutched at in attempting to explain President Bush’s motives for launching ...”

“... Sir James’s elevation and his year-long battle to punish Private Eye and jail its editor, Richard Ingrams – an effort which was supported by Wilson and Lady Falkender, both victims of Ingrams’s harassment, and which petered out in a relatively painless settlement in 1976? Ingrams’s theory is that there was such a connection. Goldsmith is no ...”

“... a Boat in the same form, will have a mild idea of the task which faced the Cambridge graduate John Smith (a sizar, married with one child) when in 1819 he was hired to decipher the six volumes of Samuel Pepys’s diary on which Magdalene College had sat for over a century. Smith did not know the system of shorthand the ...”

“... Tip 7 was not an act of God but an avoidable tragedy.These two submerged villages are central to Richard King’s oral history of Wales – or, really, of Welsh-language activism and Welsh nationalism – in the late 20th century. The injustices and catastrophes caused by the government in Westminster weren’t the only thing that stimulated Welsh activism ...”

“... grammar of bonds (or Velcro fasteners). It’s an optimistic project, one that has something of Richard Rorty’s pragmatism. One chapter in the book is given over to ‘attunement’, which Felski defines as the ‘affinities, inclinations, stirrings that often fall below the threshold of consciousness’ but play a key role in our responses to art. Zadie ...”

“... in the home he had chosen for them, and his frustrations grew dark. Recently, when the actor Matt Smith was introduced to Prince William and the prince was told Smith would soon be playing his grandfather in an epic Netflix series, The Crown, William offered only one word. ‘Legend,’ he said, as if they were talking ...”

“... English English came naturally to Boswell, less naturally but effectively in the sentences of Adam Smith and David Hume, but at the cost of the reservation of the Scottish tongue for casual, domestic or low-life use. Yet, as Daiches reminds us, with an exceptionally happy choice of quotations, the literary endeavours of the upper class were accompanied by a ...”

“... Vaizey has no doubt at all. ‘They were the best.’ Hugh Gaitskell, Iain Macleod, Richard Titmuss, Anthony Crosland and Edward Boyle. They were all ‘clever, honest, admirable and honourable’. They were all, except Boyle, who was at school at the time, affected by the slump. They were all excited by the political changes and administrative advances of the war ...”

“... by the entry first consulted can be led on a treasure hunt for further clues. Start with Adam Smith and you find a picture and a few key dates in his career. But see Free Trade. Here not only the meaning of the term but also the influence of the policy is suggested. See Richard Cobden. This leads us to the Anti-Corn Law ...”