“... Country House. The first edition was published by the Clarendon Press in 1971 and it remains, it may well be argued, the author’s finest achievement. In a field in which Georgian ‘taste’ and ‘proportion’ were still uncritically revered, the book was one of the first which did not treat Victorian country houses as monstrosities or as ...”

“... A proof of his common humanity, it might be thought. In the general execration of Blunt there may even be some stifled incredulity as to his Satanic personality, but he has also been at the receiving end of a certain dissatisfaction with the double standard in our national life. It is a peculiarity of the whole affair that Blunt is seen to be closely ...”

“... second is the alleged involvement of a government intelligence network or operation (as when on 22 May 1973, Nixon justified his participation in the cover-up by explaining that he had believed, erroneously, that the CIA was implicated).’ Spies deceive each other, the public, committees of inquiry, and finally the man from whom they claim to take their ...”

“... Is it true that all celebrities ask even the hardest cartoonist for their originals? That may only mean that the bite has gone out of it all. Yet Peter Cook, one of the early impersonators, is quoted here as saying : ‘My impersonation of Macmillan was in fact extremely affectionate – I was a great Macmillan fan.’ On the printed evidence, he ...”

“... and – especially – to Koestler’s The Sleepwalkers. The risk he runs is that his novel may seem to depart from these sources only to diminish them. Such doubts – or prejudices – survive the first half of the narrative, which deals with Kepler’s relationship with Brahe and takes in earlier scenes from his life in flashback. Occasionally the ...”

“... for humane prisons than does the hard-faced Stalinism of the Labour Party and trade unions). Boyle may be truly reformed, the violence may have burned itself out, but he was a bad bastard and there are noticeable equivocations in his testament: the Gorbals is to blame for everything, loan-sharking is a public service. He is ...”

“... in the silence of the night I admit to myself that I am not a particularly dull fellow. The reader may ask why, holding these views about my appearance, and the belief that no reproduction is likely to bring great joy to the viewer, I should have succumbed relatively often to the request to be ‘done’. The explanation here is simple. A willingness to be ...”

“... pregnancy (she is 37 – much too old in Adrian’s eyes even to be thinking of having children) may have been caused by George Mole or by Lucas. Doreen Slater (‘Stick Insect’) is certainly pregnant by George Mole. By the end of the second book Adrian has witnessed his sister’s – half sister’s? – birth, a death and a cremation. He has taken his ...”

“... of course, as Foreign Minister after the Argentines invaded the Falklands in April 1982. The book may sell: but not to Lord Carrington. Mrs Thatcher’s England is also the theme of a curious book written by Count Filo della Torre, the London correspondent of the newspaper La Repubblica. It is a labour of love. The third book is another of Cosgrave’s ...”

“... would gladly ride with Annette once more up to the little old ruined chapel, by the bridge – she may remember – where we took shelter in a thunderstorm. This is because she is part of the Past, while Ladies This, That and the Other are of this present time which wearies me ...1 Browning did not idealise this ‘Past’, but felt it as a passion of love ...”

“... of the participants in the congress, and the ideologies which fill their heads, whatever they may be, will seem as implausibly grandiose and as deviously self-serving as those of Rhodes do today. We can also be pretty sure that whatever may have kept the delegates busy that Saturday afternoon, it had not been a visit to ...”

“... World War Amery could imagine a self-sufficient Empire immune from the troubles of Europe. In May 1915 he wrote to Milner: ‘All this harping on Prussian militarism as something that must be rooted out, as itself criminal and opposed to the interests of an imaginary virtuous and pacific entity called Europe, in which we are included, is wholly ...”

“... among other things from nominal amnesia, a high-flown name for forgetfulness. Short-lived, I may say – the name or date comes back to me within a few minutes. But I can hardly stand staring at the camera for all that time. I can’t think what to do. Make something up, I suppose. There is a serious trouble in my life quite apart from Parkinson’s ...”

“... who acclaim their fathers as so perfect that no decent facsimile could possibly be found. This may be the smallest tragedy that can befall a daughter. The greatest would seem to me to be the resentment felt by more than one of these writers against the ‘masculine’ elements in their own natures, strikingly and, I think, damagingly described by Sara ...”

“... in her own life. In such places we see glimpses of a prose Edith Sitwell whose unused talents we may well regret. But perhaps we are on the wrong track. Perhaps the attempt to reduce Edith Sitwell to her works is a mistake. Perhaps the sacred monsters, the creatures of myth and legend should be simply recognised as such. Both Yeats and Gide, in seeking to ...”