“... class system, of which the Army seemed a parody. For some, National Service stimulated a devil-may-care, what-the-hell spirit, instances of which are registered in my memory but not openly recognised by Trevor Royle and his tactful informants. John Dickson, the Kray Twins’ driver, displays that what-the-hell spirit, mingled with wary obedience to his ...”

“... which takes its edge from the submission of your partner. Such pleasures dissolve the safety there may be in passion. Yet they are evidently intended to be a measure of the completeness of Catherine’s attempt to be – literally – everything to and for David, at the same time as they indicate strain in the relationship. Why must a woman be like a man to ...”

“... are sliding down the league tables of national wealth, income, longevity and productivity. This may reveal only our low expectations – but it may do something to explain why the public is so hard to arouse in the cause of political and administrative efficiency, and why it’s myopic to lash out at Whitehall rather than ...”

“... War and the feverish nostalgia for Edwardian privilege that it set in train; and although one may not have much sympathy for the sound of the upper classes weeping over their losses, it isn’t always easy (or necessary) to resist their sad chronicles of the charm before the storm, with every moment cherished in retrospective anticipation of its ...”

“... of her characters, their disease is that useful ailment, a disease of lucidity. Other writers may give us a madness, or a wedding-night, or the reading of a poem, but only Byatt consistently delivers intellectual madnesses, love-making as reflective as it is tumultuous, poems considered with painful experience and the whole resources of a mind. It is ...”

“... Miss Tink. Miss Tink, for all the monosyllabic innocence of her name, had a bad cousin, John, who may well also have influenced the child Borges, because he was one of the street-corner ‘hoodlums’ who later fascinated him, partly for being so brave as well as bad, when they fought, and partly because he saw them as ideal compendia of the local ...”

“... odds and is in its way such a surprise. In time, and with time, a critic rather than a reviewer may go some way towards unfolding how Naipaul manages it. Manages to write something which is at once a Prelude autobiography (the growth of a novelist’s mind) and a fiction – this, without Naipaul’s succumbing to the usual temptation of cannily sheltering ...”

“... experience of the colonised rather than the colonisers, who have other things on their minds and may be unaware – may even deny – that they are subjugating indigenous peoples (the tangata whenua in New Zealand Maori). In recent history – including the history of historiography – it has been necessary to remind ...”

“... involving Sefton and the Isle of Wight, and the High Court has told local councils what cuts they may or may not make. Do you agree with Mr Sumption?’ ‘I am very sympathetic with Mr Sumption and the views he has expressed,’ Lord Judge said. He then explained that judges have to enforce the law, that local authorities ...”

“... eldest child and favourite daughter of Queen Victoria, knew her first-born too well. On 2 May 1888, she secretly sent a chest containing two volumes of her husband’s diaries as well as several important documents to Windsor and asked her mother to place it with three chests her husband had deposited there the year before. William II rejected ...”

“... all of whom have been well served in recent biographies, Cobb was never a college head, and this may go some way to explaining his subsequent eclipse. It was a role for which he was epically unsuited, given his (very un-French) disdain for administration, his indiscretion and his legendary thirst. Heald’s introductory aside – ‘he liked a ...”

“... the original plan A, which involved lending the government of George Papandreou €110 billion in May last year in return for a promise to cut government spending and increase tax revenue, both by unprecedented amounts. The joint European Central Bank-EU-IMF loan was necessary because, in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, Greece was exposed as ...”

“... hardly the Berlitz method, but a blow to the head can work wonders.’ It seems that the brain may remap itself in peculiar ways, altering the neural circuitry laid down in the womb. Sometimes a slight error is made in the remapping. The sensation Nelson had that his non-existent fingers were digging into his non-existent palm led him to believe in the ...”

“... on the reasonable assumption that, as the head of Military Intelligence in the SIS put it, ‘We may well be fighting the USSR in a year.’ James, though, was outraged that we were not doing everything we could to help our ally. ‘I never felt that I was acting for the CP,’ he told me, ‘as indeed I was not. It was to help the war effort.’ He was in ...”

“... change’. ‘I hope Syrian President Bashar Assad will consider reforms, otherwise he may say to himself: “I could be the second target,”’ Richard Perle told the Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat in February 2003. As Washington sought to isolate Damascus, some Arab powers – especially Saudi Arabia and Egypt – became hostile to ...”