“... by the minister from his pulpit. Magnus makes a spirited reply: ‘You call this da House o’ da Lord. Pah! It is da House o’ Oppression. A tool of da ruling classes to keep da poor fae rebelling ... ’ This outburst is injudicious. The villagers are affronted. Further incensed by the law’s delays, they seize Magnus and lock him up in a ...”

“... creator of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker), the Earl of Malmesbury, the Count of Schleissen, Lord Brougham (once described as ‘the ugliest man of the present century next to Liston and Lord Carlyle’), Jung Bahadur (the Nepalese ambassador to London), Savile Morton (a journalist friend of Thackeray), Augustus Noel ...”

“... of Mont St Jean they left their carriage and took in the panorama. ‘In front of the right of Lord Wellington’s centre was the farm of Hougoumont … where poor Crawford [sic] was stationed.’ On the ground ‘hats, capes & the remains of every species of army accoutrement still remained on the field & heaps of slain lay buried … beneath a slight ...”

“... that, his fears dispelled, he now shares our rejoicing in eternal life, the gift of that Risen Lord who here on earth he did not yet know.That’s one way to do it. In a valedictory poem published in the LRB (6 February 1986), Clive James made a similar point, though less unctuously:A bedside manner in your graveyard toneSuggests that at the last we ...”

“... of appalling solitude trying unsuccessfully to make money out of growing sisal. When he returned home at the age of 28 his father purchased for him the local metal firm of Hoskins and Sons and he settled down to a life of conspicuous ordinariness as a medium-scale Birmingham businessman. He lived with his father and stepmother until the age of 42, when he ...”

“... inscrutable for? In some sense, to live up to a code as unexplained and as inexplicable as that of Lord Jim. Much more frontal treatment is reserved for the Spanish Franciscan missionary, Father Velas-co. It is he who believes that he understands the situation: who wheels and deals with the Japanese, tries to outwit the Jesuits, seeks to persuade the hierarchy ...”

“... PEP sought to embody the cool voice of reason, by drawing on a tradition going back at least to Lord Haldane’s classic, but rarely studied, and never implemented, 1918 Report on the machinery of government. In Sir Ernest Gower’s words, PEP set itself against ‘our national habit of forming opinions by emotional reaction to labels, rather than by ...”

“... and to concentrate on taking Mount Kent, the vital ground above Stanley. Other than politicking at home, what possible explanation can there be of this overriding of the local commander? During their discussion of Goose Green, Hastings and Jenkins make reference to one of the unsolved mysteries of the war. They say that Argentine defenders fought back fiercely ...”

“... he was teaching a class and was summoned from his desk by a caretaker, who commanded him to go home and change into a suit. ‘When I asked him what he was talking about, he said: “Harold’s spewed it.” ’ In the House of Commons, apparently, the reception was similar, with clerks flinging open the doors of the various committee-rooms to announce the ...”

“... at his feet’. He’s Synge’s Playboy – and, appropriately, he once played the Playboy – lord of everywhere, or so it seems to him and those around him, who have nothing to measure him by. Like most of McGahern’s novels, That They May Face the Rising Sun drops you in the middle of someone else’s conversation, leaving you to find your own ...”

“... because she was a replica of her ill-fated kin, a relic of the lost age of innocence. Walter Lord, who wrote the 1955 classic A Night to Remember, which, as Andrew Wilson says in his wonderful retellings of survivors’ stories, marks the beginning of the modern era of Titanic myth and memory, sailed on her as a boy. (The Olympic had her share of bad ...”

“... Cavendishes, who had no need to exploit the empire because they already owned massive estates at home. The Greys were a hardy Northumbrian family whose acreage was only a tenth of that owned by the local duke, a Tory, but they intended to be his political equals. They rose financially and socially through service to the army and the crown, at ...”

“... circumstances became yet more straitened; having always lived in church property, they had no home of their own. Pamela would survive him by another thirty years. After she could no longer sit for her portrait, Kate was enlisted. The family resemblance is striking: the long eyes, the round arcs of the eyebrows, the tapering neck, the sloping ...”

“... the plan and thrust himself forward. He secured his place on the Endeavour by pulling strings – Lord Sandwich, a former first lord of the Admiralty, was a friend, a fishing companion and Fenlands neighbour – and by spreading money about. Banks’s personal paid-for entourage for the voyage included the talented Swedish ...”

“... with all such mediation. He sent the Westmorland Gazette – a weekly Kendal paper founded by Lord Lowther in 1819 to propagandise against the Radicals – pages that were exactly ready for the press: the correct size, so no reduction or enlargement was needed; hand-drawn and hand-lettered in waterproof Indian ink, so no typesetter was needed; and of ...”