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“... Rose’s Kierkegaard lectures at the University of Sussex in 1986. But she would like us, she said, to see Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander if we could, and to read ‘The Immortal Story’ by Isak Dinesen, ‘whom I have since discovered has become rather trrrendy’ (a film had just been made of Out of Africa, the memoir Dinesen wrote under her ...”

“... on other conceivably kindred disabilities. Although the term itself is of American origin and is said to have originated in the milieu of American ego-psychology, it is not in that context that Leader ultimately finds comfort and counsel. He has a chapter on Freud (writing considered as a transgression, the blocked writer as a victim of powerful ...”

“... own curiosity. He argued in much the same terms as the animal rights groups today: he knew, he said, of no discovery resulting from vivisection by which any illness could be more easily cured. These practices, moreover, ‘harden the heart, extinguish those sensations which give man confidence in man, and make physicians more dreadful than gout or ...”

“... What really matters, I suspect, is that Nya is for him something to hold onto, like the novels of Edward Upward, which he also defends for their historical interest, relishing for example in The Spiral Ascent the word and the concept ‘poshocrat’. Like all Bagshaw-type historians, both Kermode and Cobb delight not only in the objects but in the attitudes ...”

“... dispatched him off to the Shah’s latest refuge in the Bahamas under the false name of ‘Edward Wilson’; Sir Denis, writes Shawcross, was a director of Shell and did not want the company’s name mixed up in his visit to the Shah: After a brief exchange of courtesies, ‘Wilson’ explained to the Shah that ‘Her Majesty’s Government has ...”

“... Edward Thomas​ called the approach to Oxford by train ‘the most contemptible in Europe’. There’s no view to speak of, and the station is a big shed with lots of glass and cheap detailing: blue pillars and PVC fascias. The city’s relationship to the railway, like its relationship to the world, is arrogant but insecure, high-minded but petty ...”

“... away into the woods. The naked boy speaks like an Etonian. ‘“They are very nice woods,” said the boy, with a touch of patronage in his voice.’ And then: ‘It’s quite two months since I tasted child flesh.’ Saki wrote in the vernacular of the drawing room but with the ruthlessness of an avenging prophet. A.A. Milne wrote in an early ...”

“... fall,’ they thought. It was in many ways a book for its time. Tuchman’s story begins with Edward VII’s funeral on 20 May 1910. The king’s sister-in-law, the empress consort of Russia, Maria Feodorovna, wife of Alexander III, was there. So was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the aged Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. And so was ...”

“... Indeed it was Baldwin’s conciliatory attitude that ended the strike so peacefully. Then it is said that Baldwin was responsible for large-scale unemployment – nothing like as great as under the most recent Labour government. Baldwin was an appeaser. To the best of my recollection, we in the Labour Party were for appeasement and we condemned Baldwin for ...”

“... on the implications of that 1990 Sun headline (surely the longest Sun headline ever written) which said: ‘Britain has gone sex-crazy as red-hot lovers rush to do it in the great outdoors, say experts.’Much of this book belongs to one of those articles called ‘Fifty Amazing Things You Never Knew About the Weather’ (No 50: Did you know that yellow rain ...”

“... eating chocolate bars. We had exchanged a few words about the chocolate bars we preferred. M said she liked caramel-filled ones, I expressed a greater interest in dry biscuity ones, then we fell silent and I looked out across a field to a clump of trees by a stream . . . These trees gave off an impression of astonishing health and exuberance. They seemed ...”

“... with diminishing effect, until the last decade of the 17th century. The first thing that should be said about the current controversy is that nothing resembling press licensing – the prior authorisation of publications – is being proposed by anyone. Even in its strong form, regulation is concerned with redressing and in extreme cases penalising ...”

“... the Twenties. He made his name by devising a water filtration system to prevent epidemics. It is said that he demonstrated the effectiveness of his invention to Emperor Hirohito by urinating into his filter and inviting the Emperor to drink the result. Ishii’s filter was perhaps the doctor’s only benign contribution to mankind. After reading a report ...”

“... respond to a (dubbed) interview with Martin McGuinness in which Sinn Fein’s vice-president had said the ceasefire would endure ‘in all circumstances’. Mayhew said he thought what Martin had had to say was of great interest. Martin? Does this signify something? Meanwhile, in Belfast, reporters were pressing Adams on ...”

“... the same point. The modern city was ugly because it was irreligious and inhumane: these, Pugin said, are the shoddy buildings of a shoddy age. His examples were exaggerated, his logic was faulty, his grasp of history tenuous. But Contrasts spoke an important truth to a public anxious about rapidly expanding industrial cities, social change and ...”