“... asks Hingley, querying de Mallac’s rather coy observation that his hero, like the young Tolstoy, ‘was not above calling on ladies of easy virtue,’ and that this ‘will be documented by some later, less bashful biographer’. But can it be? asks Hingley. There is no evidence one way or another. De Mallac’s suggestion is illustrative of ...”

“... times were changing, and we might see his hopeful trend exemplified, a few years later, in the young Louis MacNeice. MacNeice studied philosophy under a pupil of Bradley’s, and spent part of one summer holiday ploughing through the required reading while staying in the South of France:I was very fond of Bradley’s dictum that every judgment … is a ...”

“... deep sea keep you up. The second edition of Science and Poetry had not been out a year before Stephen Spender entitled his book on modern writers and belief (or unbelief) The Destructive Element, describing Richards’s note as ‘a focal point from which diverge rays towards past and future’. Certainly Conrad’s words give some insight into ...”

“... as well as a Momentum branch flag and a ‘Women for Corbyn’ banner. The crowd was largely young and white, but there was an older generation too – veterans of the struggle. Behind me a young man who had come with his mother dipped into a Waitrose bag and – perhaps eager to pre-empt the charge of champagne ...”

“... these benefits even when they are entitled to them.(This ruling is the latest handiwork of Stephen Miller, the 33-year-old senior policy adviser who is the architect of the Muslim ban, the separation of children from their parents at the border and the drastic reduction in the number of refugees admitted into the country. He has created new regulations ...”

“... I first went​ to Camberwell New Cemetery about six years ago, looking for the grave of a young man called Melvin Bryan, a petty criminal who died after being stabbed at a drug-house in Edmonton. Walking down the pathways and over the crisp, frozen leaves, I’d noticed how many of the people buried there had died young – you can often pick them out by the soft toys resting against the gravestones ...”

“... Both versions have the allusion I have just spotted to the song ‘Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life’ by Young and Herbert (from Naughty Marietta). ‘At last I’ve found thee,’ the line continues, picking up the idea of finding pain when paradise is lost, or has lost us. ‘Mistery’ suggests missing mastery as well as what we don’t know. Another ...”

“... squad, two at a time. There were five British victims: four Gibraltarians and Robert Boyd, a young Irish officer of the Bengal Army who’d put up most of the cash, hoping for a glamorous alternative to service in India as a grandee in Torrijos’s Spain. He was better treated, though, than Lorca would be. The Spanish government allowed the British ...”

“... fellow sideman Robert Baheire, the churchwardens Thomas Holmes and Edward Ley, and the minister Stephen Egerton. Laoutaris has also established the exact location of Field’s printing shop, in a property called (after its former monastic use) the Timber House. This lay off the western end of Carter Lane, abutting onto the back of Elizabeth Russell’s ...”

“... of the Journal of Botany’, Swartz posted a few tweets about the case. The lead prosecutor, Stephen Heymann, described this as a ‘wild internet campaign’ that moved the case ‘to an institutional level’. In November 2011, nine more felony counts were added. There were several rounds of plea negotiations: the jail time on offer in exchange for a ...”

“... preordained about the collapse of the tsarist autocracy nor even of the Provisional Government,’ Stephen Smith writes, in his sober, well-researched and comprehensive history. Sean McMeekin seconds this, affirming that ‘the events of 1917 were filled with might-have-beens and missed chances’ while at the same time tipping his hat to show who the ...”

“... forward over Peru’s apocalyptic years, from 1965 to 1986. At the starting-point a philosophical young revolutionary, Gabriel Lung (he has Chinese blood), falls in love with Elena Silves (she has Portuguese blood). Elena has a religious vision and performs a confirmatory miracle. She is imprisoned by the authorities in a convent. Gabriel becomes a ...”

“... Mary) of Holy Pictures, doesn’t leave the Dublin of 1925 and grows in that year from girl to young woman by force of staying at home. This strong, clever novel (Clare Boylan’s first) goes over much familiar ground of childhood – the convent school, pubescence, sex education, weak mother, aggressive father, bad-talking cook, skeleton in familial trunk ...”

“... structure and life of our family units are changing. Marriage is popular – often contracted at a young age, and often not very durable. But in spite of the present ease of entering and leaving wedlock, 16 per cent of births, 99,000 children a year, are illegitimate. Yet only three and a half thousand of these come on the adoption market. A lot of family life ...”

“... and of passion that fiction ordinarily privileges. ‘London has swallowed up many millions of young men called Smith,’ we are told in Mrs Dalloway. Woolf records and reclaims Smith from anonymity, just as she does the domestic life of Mrs Ramsay, whose energies are not expressed in writing. This desire to give space and meaning to unregarded lives is a ...”