“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... fans week after week, which makes them lose their sense of self-esteem and taking a short cut home through these graves here they reassert the glory of their team by spraying words on tombstones, pissed on beer. This graveyard stands above a worked-out pit. Subsidence makes the obelisks all list. One leaning left’s marked FUCK, one right’s marked SHIT ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... synagogue, and now, with the addition of a shiny minaret to its Georgian façade, it is spiritual home to the Bangladeshi Muslims of East London. Today hardly any British politicians have the courage to admit that immigration is essential to a successful society, but late 17th-century England experienced an uncharacteristic moment of generosity towards the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... streets of Reykjavik? I have one precedent I can rely on: Your own impulsive Letter to Lord Byron. I can’t cast you as you cast suave Lord B. –     An anti-fascist pal, who if alive Would give my views his raffish sympathy     And see the present through my decade’s eyes.     This letter’s no ...”

“... the age of 25, so the family seems to be getting more precocious from generation to generation,’ Lord Stansgate observed in 1950, adding: ‘He is a very keen and active member of the Church.’ Though young Wedgie was moving away from institutional religion, he remained a true disciple of a secularised nonconformist ethic, ready to declare in 1989: ‘The ...”

“... wanted was to know – which, among other things, has made him popular with philosophers. From his home town of Thagaste, he goes to study in Madauros (365-369), a small but well-known intellectual centre, also in North Africa, then in 370 moves on to university in Carthage. There he finds a mistress, another North African whom he never names, with whom he has ...”

“... not all historians agree) has him cut down by William himself, together with the author’s local lord and his nephew. This is the least likely to be true. The second earliest source contradicts all the others by recording Harold’s fall in the battle’s first phase. This is almost certainly because the source or his copyist misread the Latin abbreviation ...”

“... weakening of traditional religion focused greater attention on pain. When one’s hope and true home lay in heaven, earthly sufferings paled into insignificance.’ When you recover from stubbing your toe on the cliché, this looks so deeply questionable as not to be worth the speculating. ‘Traditional religion’ probably underwent more ...”