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“... Historians have a taste for labels that capture the character or spirit of a period – The Bleak Age, The Age of Equipoise or, in a recent work on the interwar period, The Morbid Age. It will serve early 21st-century Britain right if it becomes known as ‘The Aspirational Age’. To those who can use the word ‘aspirational’ without wincing, this might seem high praise ...”

“... One of the most fascinating yet elusive aspects of cultural change is the way certain ideals and arguments acquire an almost self-evident power at particular times, just as others come to seem irrelevant or antiquated and largely disappear from public debate. In the middle of the 18th century, to describe a measure as ‘displaying the respect that is due to rank’ was a commonplace commendation; in the middle of the 19th, affirming that a proposal contributed to ‘the building of character’ would have been part of the mood music of public discourse; in the middle of the 20th, ‘a decent standard of life’ was the goal of all parties and almost all policies ...”

“... A dictionary is, first and foremost, a practical resource; its usability when subjected to a variety of everyday scholarly demands must be the chief test of its worth. But a work on the scale of The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is bound also to be seen as much more than a reference tool: as, by turns, a statement of national identity, an occasion for communal pride, a showcase for contemporary historical scholarship, a piece of swagger publishing, and, less directly, a stay against oblivion, a giant memorial slab designed to stir thoughts on fame and obscurity, on mortality and immortality ...”

“... Once​ upon a time, the distribution of power and privilege was determined by birth. Now, it is determined by merit. And that, in a nutshell, is the history of the long 20th century.It may be a parody, but this little narrative encapsulates one of the structuring claims of contemporary public debate. We can argue over the extent to which merit is, in fact, now the chief determinant of reward, but there is remarkably wide agreement that it should be, and that the operation of this principle is part of what defines a properly modern, even progressive, society ...”

“... We see a higher education sector which meets the needs of the economy in terms of trained people, research and technology transfer. At the same time it needs to enable all suitably qualified individuals to develop their potential both intellectually and personally, and to provide the necessary storehouse of expertise in science and technology, and the arts and humanities which defines our civilisation and culture ...”

“... It’s time for the criticism to stop. Whatever you think about the changes to higher education that have been made in recent years, in particular the decision in the autumn of 2010 largely to replace public funding of teaching with student fees, this is now the system we’ve got. Carping about the principle or sniping at the process is simply unhelpful: it antagonises ministers and officials, thereby jeopardising future negotiations, and it wins little sympathy from the media and wider public ...”

“... Stefan Collini writes: ‘Yes, I’d like that very much. That really would be something to look forward to.’ Frank was already weakened and wasted by throat cancer, but my suggestion that we go to watch some cricket at Fenner’s did seem genuinely to appeal to him. There wasn’t much to look forward to by this point ...”

“... a time – a very considerable sum. These are among the many striking items of information in Stefan Collini’s Absent Minds, whose title appears to accept the myth that the book disputes: that there are no British intellectuals – intellectuals are always elsewhere – or that those who think of themselves as intellectuals are really empty-headed ...”

“... in America and by Raymond Williams’s Arnoldian meditations in Culture and Society in Britain, Stefan Collini produced his impressive Matthew Arnold: A Critical Portrait in 1994. And there have been two cap-à-pie biographies: Park Honan’s in 1981 (with its provocative identification of ‘Marguerite’) and Nicholas Murray’s two years ago (with ...”

“... In seven of the nine chapters in this fine book Dr Collini depicts the denizens of the Athenaeum in its great days. T.H. Huxley, having left his umbrella at Matthew Arnold’s, asks his friend to ‘bring it next time you come to the club’. Leslie Stephen, elected in 1877 on the strength of his History of English Thought in the 18th Century, enjoys the irony that this defence of free thought has given him ‘admission to a respectable haunt of bishops and judges ...”

“... nationalism he has a go at a senior contributor, Neal Ascherson, along the way. In the same spirit Stefan Collini takes a disparaging glance at Christopher Hitchens, a former contributor well known for his repertory of disparaging glances. No hard feelings, one hopes. ‘No harm done.’ ‘No hard feelings, one hopes.’ Inscrutable? Ironic? Playful? Or ...”

“... study in intellectual history, and its authorship exemplifies the unity and coherence of the art. Stefan Collini has made his reputation as the historian of late 19th-century sociological thought. Donald Winch has long been known for path-breaking studies of the Smithian and Keynesian epochs. John Burrow’s elegant anatomy of the evolutionary paradigm ...”

“... a whiff of well-hung grouse in the reactions he provokes, and it tends to linger in the house. Stefan Collini, for the opposition, imagines Hitchens ‘as twilight gathers and the fields fall silent, lying face down in his own bullshit’ (LRB, 23 January 2003). Colin MacCabe, for the friends, tells us that passages of the memoir, Hitch-22, are ...”

“... One of the few commentators who did not share the widespread admiration for Our Age was Stefan Collini (in an essay now reworked and reprinted in his English Pasts).* Sensing its ambivalent and sometimes contradictory voices, Collini teasingly observed that the book really had two authors: ‘Noel ...”

“... archaeology and had made one or two notable contributions to academic philosophy. But as Stefan Collini observes in his chapter on Collingwood in Absent Minds, if he had died in 1938 from his first stroke, his work would probably have earned ‘only a small footnote in the more conscientious surveys of 20th-century British philosophy and ...”