“... future publisher of the Yellow Book, by asking fortuitously: ‘Johnnie darling, won’t you come home with me?’ Even when he’s not quoting directly, White’s stories and statistics are chiefly drawn from contemporary sources. Here, then, is an attempt at a fresh portrait of 19th-century London, describing its evolution from the ...”

“... be about, what non-fabulous reality lurks behind it or in its sights? The Lamb, also known as the Lord of the Mines, is the blind ruler of an underground realm beneath a ruined industrial landscape. ‘There had been a time,’ we read, ‘when these deserted solitudes were alive with hope, excitement and conjecture on how the world was to be ...”

“... At the outbreak of World War One, the British Government decided to postpone Home Rule for Ireland, which had just been enacted. Despite this, many Nationalists as well as Unionists enlisted in the British Army. Some radical Nationalists came to believe that action was needed to revive national sentiment. The Easter Rising of 1916 failed, but the execution of most of its leaders, followed two years later by an attempt to impose conscription on Ireland, led to a radicalisation of Nationalist opinion ...”

“... sign that no preconceptions about literary categories are in place. I once had to speak up for The Lord of the Rings at a retrospective version of the Booker Prize for 1954 – the other candidates were Under the Net, The New Men, Lucky Jim, A Proper Marriage and Lord of the Flies, which won – and needless to say I was the ...”

“... He learned little at the dames’ schools to which he was sent, and for a year was taught at home by his mother, but that ‘made him squirm’ and he pulled horrible nervous faces. So he was sent to King’s College Choir School as a ‘mouldy day-bug’, and here the chaplain, Eric Milner-White, is said to have interested him in religion. Michael ...”

“... C.S. Lewis was born in 1898, the son of a Belfast solicitor. He was educated first at home, then in England at a preparatory school, at Malvern (for one term only), and by a private tutor. So to Oxford. It was 1917. Lewis had volunteered, and he was in effect an officer cadet, soon in ‘barracks’ at Keble. He returned to Oxford after a brief spell on the Western front, where he was wounded, and at Oxford he stayed until 1954 when he was appointed to a chair in Cambridge ...”

“... and the birth of an heir. In the early hours of the next morning, two miles from the marital home, the lover is found dead in his car. He has been shot through the ear at close range. Later that day the husband lights a bonfire near the house: in this bonfire he tries to burn, among other things, a pair of gym shoes and a blood-stained golf-stocking. He ...”

“... stories are almost untranslatable, though Leo Marshall’s English versions in Woof, Woof, Dear Lord (Kedros, 1995) give something of their flavour. Dimitriou’s first novel, May Your Name Be Blessed, is a more likely candidate for cultural migration: history is more explicitly present than it is in the stories, offering a handhold for foreign readers. The ...”

“... experiment with a Press and Censorship Board, serious efforts to control the media were abandoned. Lord Reith, who was briefly minister for information, believed that the news was ‘the shock troops of propaganda’ and that it should be as full and truthful as possible in order to be believed. This became the official position, a change of policy that left ...”

“... guardians of the poor and all-round improvers of public amenities, for fear that instability at home would undermine British power overseas. It is not difficult to see the attractions of these new interpretations. Hanoverian history has become exciting again. The long stand-off between Namierite history from above and Edward Thompson-style history from ...”

“... or progress, or Proust), it will be followed and to blazes with the armchair traveller back home. No, she decides near the beginning of Passenger to Tehran, she is not even sure she likes the idea of travel. Perhaps – and for the Nicolsons there are few greater sins – it is middle class, like saying ‘weekend’ or getting a knighthood. She went ...”

“... out of the book I am copying) English poetry more from seeing a place like this. I only felt at home once – when I came to a steep lane with a Stream in the middle. The rest one noticed with a foreign eye, picking out the strange and not as in ones own country the familiar things for interest – the fault by the way of all poetry about countries not the ...”

“... CHOICE’. Winshaw turns out to have been a mentor to the current rector of the college, Lord Lucrum, who sets up a committee called the Institute for Quality Valuation, which specialises in evaluating things that aren’t usually thought of – or haven’t yet been thought of – as having a price. Rachel’s tutor, Laura, ends up working as a ...”

“... any privatised prisons back into public ownership ‘as soon as contractually possible’, now as Home Secretary negotiating with yet more big corporations for the privatisation of yet more prisons; ‘bluff John’ Prescott, the authentic voice of proletarian Old Labour, who made it ‘crystal clear’ to the 1993 Labour Party Conference that a Labour ...”

“... caught neatly in Partridge’s recipe for ‘Marmelade very comfortable and restorative for any Lord or Lady whatsoever’. Many manuscript collections present more intimate, first-hand associations (‘Cousin Mabel’s way of making almond milk’). Partridge’s recipes were (he tells us) ‘gathered out of sundry Experiments, lately practised by men of ...”