“... and Radclyffe Hall, with her lover Una Troubridge, thought of taking a cottage in Rye. She may have felt some disappointment, having planned her novel in a crusader’s spirit. She claimed to have written the first full-length treatment in English of women who loved women. In Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer, she said, ‘the subject was only ...”

“... On the flat or over the sticks there is no quarter given in racing, none expected. Jockeys may be the best of friends in the weighing-room – though the most successful are often loners – but once under starter’s orders it is every man for himself. No room for the amateur, no room for any but the most hardened, mentally and ...”

“... dealt at length with these topics – a fact that strengthens the impression that Redford’s book may serve best as an addition and often a valuable updating, in relation to these older non-specialist works. British readers may be irritated by the author’s North American brand of popularese; he has suffered, too, from bad ...”

“... in the community. Instead we are told that the preliminary psychiatric examination of a person ‘may, and often does, inaugurate a period of weeks, months or years during which that person is kept imprisoned – that is, in involuntary custody, and there drugged, regimented, reconditioned, brain given electric lavages, bits possibly taken out by knife or ...”

“... attracted him. He was ‘as wild as the winds (or I should not have taken so to him)’. But he may have seen in Jack the unattainable ideal when he exclaimed after a more than usually rough night: ‘Drunken brutes. How was it that Jack was so different from the others?’ Yet perhaps John Sparrow was not altogether mocking Leeves. Some years ago he ...”

“... was not so much a work of tenacious parody or stomping satire as a pretty good leg-pull: which may be why the London Review of Books, when the letters were published in 1979, called them ‘a disgrace to publishing’. I liked the jape. Or at least, I liked maybe two-thirds of it. Because once you realised what Root was up to and how he made the joke work ...”

“... at the discovery of a governmental hypocrisy which determined his historic betrayal. In May 1878, Lord Salisbury and the Russian Ambassador in England, Count Schouvaloff, were busy concocting a treaty. Unhappily for Lord Salisbury, Marvin, already embittered over his employment, had a deep hostility to the ‘Russian Ex-Inquisitor’, as he called ...”

“... secret yearning, possibly, is to be the greatest marine biologist in the world. Nero and Commodus may even have lost their thrones and lives for the same reason: that their incompatible ambition was to be the greatest artist or the greatest chariot-driver. And something a bit similar gives its interest to the career of Katharine Hepburn, making this biography ...”

“... eat them, at which moment they are both tasted and smelled, via the back of the mouth? The answer may be partly psychological. Psychology does not seem to be McGee’s strong point: ‘If we eat half as many calories [by eating fructose instead of sucrose], we simply get hungry earlier’ begs a lot of questions. He will probably come up with more answers in ...”

“... Such activities made his youth the ‘years of pleasure’. While ivy-tower historians may analyse Ménétra as the prototypical homo faber of the Ancien Régime, some readers will fix on homo fornicator. These two themes – work and love – dominate the journal. Ménétra makes constant ‘offerings at Cupid’s altar’, and in later life sets ...”

“... than accepting the Crown version in its untested form – will confront them. Wherever the truth may lie, it patently is less likely to lie in a version which reached the general public before it had been challenged and tested. The adversarial system does not reach truth, but it takes steps away from error. The logical weakness of the prosecution case stands ...”

“... is Huntford correct in his criticism of Scott’s methods – or, rather, non-methods – he also may well be correct in his speculations about the workings of Scott’s mind. Shackleton probably did haunt Scott as a competitor more than Amundsen, even though Shackleton was in England, Amundsen in the Antarctic, when the great race began. Scott had humiliated ...”

“... imprints were founded or came to prominence during the slump. Whatever difficulties booksellers may now be having in holding a high level of stock, and whatever constraints publishers, particularly independent publishers, are under in finding the cash to invest in new editions and fund work in progress – i.e. commission authors to write books – there is ...”

“... in migraine and, quite frequently, in post-encephalitic patients ‘awakened’ by L-DOPA. And it may occur, as Hughlings Jackson notes, in the course of some seizures.Mrs O’C. was somewhat deaf, but otherwise in good health. She lived in an old people’s home. One night, in January 1979, she dreamt vividly, nostalgically, of her childhood in Ireland, and ...”

“... and that ‘England escaped, in his failure to become Premier, very serious dangers.’ There may have been a hint here of a sinister disease, and it is a puzzle to know how far Lord Randolph’s reckless behaviour can be explained on medical grounds. Even in his early thirties he suffered serious illnesses which drove him abroad in search of health. He ...”