“... the 1919 Exhibition of Modern French Art. Their snooty irreverence had made postwar England feel young again, so D.H. Lawrence is said to have said (although in making Osbert the model for Lord Chatterley, Lawrence may have been seeking to modify his celebration). In the social climate of the late Thirties, it was convenient to forget them, but they had done ...”

“... had invented a brand new version of his own. Exciting times? You bet. Of course, I was young and flying without any background to keep me from floating away on the wings of misunderstanding, but judging by the practical results of Laing’s theory and his own life’s progress, my reasoning on the basis of what I read may not have been too far off ...”

“... a ‘farewell ceremony’ in 18th-century Poland. ‘A certain Miss Szamowska saying goodbye to a young gentleman called Tollohub offered him, as was customary, a glass of wine. Tollohub was already sitting on his horse, ready to ride off. He drank the wine, put the empty glass between the ears of his horse, broke it with one shot of his ...”

“... routes in Snowdonia with Mallory just before the Great War and was told by Geoffrey Winthrop Young that he had ‘the finest natural balance’ he had ever seen in a climber. At the height of his enthusiasm he wrote that climbing ‘made all other sports seem trivial’, and in Goodbye to All That he records a fine physical image of the well-being that ...”

“... One was age: the old, left as well as right, were far more likely to vote for Brexit than the young. But another division, just as pronounced, was education: whether or not someone had gone to university was one of strongest indicators of voting behaviour in the referendum (just under 70 per cent of university graduates voted Remain). Yet a degree has ...”

“... afraid of him. But even if that statement is suspect the circumstances it summarises are not. When young, one of the King’s sons was ill-treated, another had his digestion ruined for life, and all were forced to wear splints to prevent them being knock-kneed. They were lamentably ill-educated, and all showed signs of nervous tension which stemmed from ...”

“... was master in his own house whereas Kasmin had a backer, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, a young Guinness heir. Another was that Fraser lacked the experience in running a gallery that Kasmin had. Born in 1934, Kasmin had worked from 1956 to 1958 at Gallery One under Victor Musgrave, a true pioneer who in the 1950s was the first dealer in London to show ...”

“... and middle-aged reviewers – some of whom actually took Thirlwell to task for the crime of being young – that one badly wanted to warm to its refreshingly callow, hectoring and capacious take on the history of fiction. Sadly, Miss Herbert was not what it seemed, and over the long (600-page) haul Thirlwell’s mild nostrums about the primacy of world over ...”

“... of religious truths to a dispersed public audience from the emotional intimacy dramatised in Young’s Night Thoughts. (The ‘Mr Fairly’ with whom Fanny Burney had what is for Guest a paradigmatic conversation about Young at Court in the 1780s was Col. Stephen Digby, the Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain.) It is a tribute ...”

“... of Days (1914). On the outbreak of war he managed to get himself attached to the staff of Sir David Henderson, then commanding the Royal Flying Corps, and after some difficulty in donning his uniform (‘Six people endeavoured to put on my puttees; none of them were entirely successful, except finally in the evening. Sir ...”

“... The Frankish poet Angelbert declares his devotion to the emperor by saying: Vatis Homerus amat David – ‘Homer the poet [i.e. Angelbert!] loves David.’ The admiration of these poets for their Classical predecessors, especially Virgil, can lead to something little better than pastiche (though that may itself be ...”

“... figures whose importance it recovers. Elsewhere the story is in parts familiar. There are the young bloods, Francis Basset and George Legge, Viscount Lewisham, sitting in scarlet coats to Pompeo Batoni, whose portraits by this stage were so formulaic that their subjects might as well have stuck their heads through a hole in a pre-painted background. But ...”

“... measures inflicted by the police, and not only below the Mason-Dixon line. Police killings of young black men, along with the mass incarceration of poor blacks in US prisons, have become the symbol of a national disgrace that is no more hidden than the concealed weapons that far too many Americans carry, and which is a symptom of the same faith in ...”

“... they looked like. She made things in plasticine – heads, flowers – and drew and painted from a young age. When she was 16 she enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where she studied illustration and textile design and took life drawing classes with Bernard Meninsky, who was known for his heavy black charcoal lines (Cooke preferred a 3H ...”

“... administration and espionage – made this country a world power? In this meditation I found David Kynaston a sympathetic companion. Not that he has anything of interest to say about Lloyd’s: this oversight is one of my many frustrations with his excellent book. But he is deeply interested in the nature of the City, in what made it successful then and ...”