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“... the historian H.T. Buckle. ‘All that we want is discussion, and then we are sure to do well, no matter what our blunders may be.’ In Liberal vision, the lamp of reason blazes forth to scatter the forces of tradition, obscurantism, convention, violence, deceit, formality, Medieval superstition and unearned privilege. Many of these forces were seen as ...”

“... friends to join him in setting up a legion of volunteers to help Greece in its war against Turkey. No man in London was chucked out of more political meetings; his house was full of Russians, Indians, Irishmen, suffragettes, anarchists and troublemakers of all kinds. He rode a white charger at the head of suffrage marches, and carried himself with such ...”

“... The title of Frances FitzGerald’s new book comes from the sermon John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, delivered on board the Arabella shortly before landing in the New World in 1630. Fully conscious of the exemplary character of their enterprise, he urged his companions to walk humbly in the ways of God by remaining true to the Puritan tenets of a faith they could no longer practise in England ...”

“... and institutions, all run by and serving African Americans. To be sure, as the Black historian John Hope Franklin, who spent his early years in Tulsa, pointed out in his memoirs, the label ‘Black Wall Street’ was a bit of a misnomer. Most of the residents worked as cooks and maids in the homes of white Tulsans and many lived in rented rooms or shacks ...”

“... painters such as we might expect. There is an occasional echo in Delacroix and Manet, but no painter paid homage to him in quite the way that Gainsborough had in the previous century. The great esteem for Murillo was, incidentally, no less strong in Britain than in France, and the most beautiful Murillos in North ...”

“... startling tapestry of the marvellous. He’s a storyteller after Benjamin’s heart, and has no truck with functionalist explanations; he relishes the unverifiable and offers no rhyme or reason for what he is passing on. He doesn’t claim that saints’ stories help keep track of time or indeed that they have any ...”

“... And so I read on, secure in what I think I am doing in experiencing this text. But what if I had no such contextual knowledge? And what if the binding and title page had been torn away? It would be easy to imagine that the unbound text was the autobiography of a man called David Copperfield, and if I had grown to know the text intimately and love it ...”

“... P.143. First three lines. P.183. Third, fourth and fifth lines.’ Break off to hum a few music-hall hits: ‘Par’ ought to know’; ‘When there isn’t a girl about, you do feel lonely.’ Scramble your commentary with polyglot puns and in clashing literary registers: ‘Successful shade, accept my hand in fraternal contrition! We are druv’ to ...”

“... wife about Blunt soon after his recruitment, and agreed with her that he should see ‘Green’ no more. Indeed, as editor of the New Republic, as chairman of the American Veterans’ Committee and as a liberal supporter of Henry Wallace, Michael Straight became for a time a quite vigorous and effective opponent of the Communist Party of the United States ...”

“... Farrant, and later by Oxford’s Boys, an amalgam of children’s companies put together by John Lyly, who was then secretary to the Earl of Oxford. Two elegant Lyly comedies, Campaspe and Sappho and Phao, were premiered there in 1584, but in that same year legal wrangles over the lease led to the closure of the theatre. If Shakespeare and his company ...”

“... 1993, accompanied by his friend Duwayne Brooks. They were waiting to catch a bus near the Well Hall Roundabout in Eltham, South London. A group of white youths ran across the road without warning. Stephen Lawrence was stabbed twice. Duwayne Brooks heard the remark ‘What? What? Nigger!’ as the youths approached. From here on, there is ...”

“... sometimes perplexed as to why Birmingham had been settled in the first place’. It had no fort, no castle, no major river, no cathedral. Until the 18th century it was overshadowed in size, wealth and importance by nearby places such as ...”

“... of the high wall are mattressed in a tumble of wisteria, helpful to escapees. But the jumper is no botanist, no philosopher of wild places. He’s away before the dog accompanists are let into a green oasis that operates like the Marshalsea Prison: if you are inside when the bell sounds, you stay the night. Low-level ...”

“... in awkward particulars, grit under the eyelid. Areal is what you finish up with when there’s no way out, economically, emotionally, spiritually – with Connex and Railtrack operating the only escape chute. With Quatermass pits for Channel Tunnel links. With chalk quarries made over into retail colonies. With every tame wilderness marked down as a future ...”

“... to divine that something odd is going on behind the scenes of Adam Sisman’s new biography of John le Carré. In the past, would-be biographers have been discouraged from poking their noses into the business of David Cornwell, the former spy who has written under that curious pseudonym since 1961. Robert Harris chose not to proceed, for reasons that are ...”