“... admirable edition of The Winnington Letters, that in his missives to those schoolgirls one may hear the voice of Ruskin addressing the girl he loved. Of course, the fact that such letters were addressed to tender minds made all the more delicate the expression of Ruskin’s religious sense; and there is a beauty in what Ruskin says to the girls that ...”

“... expired, he applied for the chair in physics at McGill University in Montreal, hoping ‘that this may make J.J. act in respect of getting me something to do in Cambridge. I will probably go in for a fellowship this year ...’ In fact nothing materialised, and most of Rutherford’s great discoveries were made at Montreal and later Manchester. He returned to ...”

“... for making enemies. According to his Times obituarist, he was underrated and misunderstood, which may well be true. He was certainly hard-working, relentless, and a man of principle. Perhaps the fairest one-liner, coined when he was still only Solicitor-General, was that his mind was a very blunt instrument which could sometimes be found pointing in the right ...”

“... that is required is a large and colourful lie,’ Zak tells the Mosleyites – whereupon Amos, who may or may not have had a Jewish grandfather, chips in with ‘Why not pick on the Jews?’ But it is Zak, not Amos, who joins the New Party and adopts the role of a Jewish anti-semite. I was Mosley’s double, a star turn ...”

“... and scourging, prayers and fasting, and, worse than these, the forcible confession of sins that may not even have been contemplated, let alone committed: over all is the fear of the eternal flames, the begging to die and to be taken into God’s bliss. The power of this terrible creed, soon to be subsumed into Wesleyanism proper, is sustained by the crazed ...”

“... of the telephone has not yet fostered the habit of returning calls.’ Eight: Finnegans Wake may have something to do with the execution, on 8 December 1922 – of Rory O’Connor, one of the Irregulars. Nine: ‘Dublin remains obsessed with the writers it doesn’t read.’ I have listed these items mainly to indicate that anything you care to say about ...”

“... was also a gross overestimation of the Luftwaffe’s bombing capacity which R.V. Jones suggests may have been due to an RAF officer’s joke that was taken seriously. Basil Collier, author of The Defence of the United Kingdom (1957) in the Official History series, points out that privileged historians like himself were aware of the Allied access to Ultra in ...”

“... that marked the end of Brezhnev’s rule: from this, even so independent a mind as Medvedev’s may not have been entirely immune. With a new leader in the Kremlin and political change in the air, he has begun, in the last few months, to speak out again, even though the present climate for dissent could hardly be less congenial. The fact that Medvedev is ...”

“... business brought about by the impact of total war. His career in the period covered by this book may be divided into four phases: the three years down to May 1915 in which he continued to hold office under Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer; the subsequent year in which he presided over the Ministry of Munitions in the ...”

“... frightful weather.’ Polly is charmed. The next minute, matters are arranged so that she may experience one of the sudden infatuations Jane Gardam is so good at depicting, along with the equally sudden retraction which is sure to follow. An earlier novel – A Long Way from Verona (1971) – contained a character who looked like Rupert Brooke: this ...”

“... power are incompatible.’ He retorts that ‘a literary style cultivated like a hothouse plant may show a certain artificial purity, but it won’t be really pure.’ The polarising of intellect and power is demonstrable rubbish: Grass quotes, in several of these speeches, examples of writers who have wielded power – usually with noxious results. Even ...”

“... liberation – not less for love but expanding/Of love beyond desire’, continues: History may be servitude, History may be freedom. See, now they vanish The faces and places, with the self which, as it                              could, loved them, To become renewed, transfigured, in ...”

“... modern England. This will be such a monumental exercise that the very bloody-mindedness of it all may undermine the complacency of one or two of you. Obtuse as you are about Christianity, and liable as you may be to confuse it with the Bishop of Durham, I am going to shock you into a consciousness of its ...”

“... and promise myself work or love or letters, or fall back on the comfortable reflection that I may soon be dead myself.’ A reluctant but conscientious officer, he went off quite routinely, thanks to a piece of shrapnel in the mouth. In the sealed world of The Children of the Souls the lower orders are neither seen nor heard. Voices from the Spanish Civil ...”

“... work on the 18th century has shown, he writes well. His Thoughts on the Present Discontents may not quite match Burke’s: but they are cleverly marshalled. His many insights are highly informative. His few in comprehensions could hardly be more revealing. Mr Carswell names the Assessors who sat with the Robbins Committee and acted as liaison officers ...”