“... but in these pieces there is a looseness of structure which sometimes becomes merely lax. It may seem unfair to remark that there are self-indulgent passages of this kind in ‘Monday June 26th 1916’, since Strachey’s declared purpose there was to record the events of a single day, abjuring ‘selected realisms’ in the hope of capturing ‘its ...”

“... individual conscience against corporate ukase – has recurrent relevance. Even toping Tom May, the ‘tankard-bearing Muse’ whose death gave such pleasure to the poet Marvell (‘came to his death,’ says Aubrey, ‘after drinking with his chin tyed with his cap (being fatt) – suffocated’), showed relative restraint in plumping out the plot and ...”

“... Unionist politics at the time. Building on the foundations that he has laid, three further lines may, perhaps, be suggested. Politically, the link between tariff reform and the Liberal Party needs further exploration – and the link with the Labour Party, too, if one thinks of Blatchford. Grayson and the British Socialist Party. Despite its title, this book ...”

“... would drag to hell A spirit from on high. Orphans can cast the evil eye on us; their bad luck may be communicable. But what Riley was primarily saying was then considered perfectly acceptable: the poor and unfortunate were put here by divine dispensation so that luckier people could acquire merit by exercising charity towards them. Such Victorian ...”

“... and this approach to Olive Schreiner, which places her as a polemicist rather than a novelist, may be the most durable basis for her fame. In one of her letters Schreiner predicted that potential biographers would never understand her horror of falsity. How does a biographer, accustomed to delve for a buried self, relate to a person who presents herself ...”

“... and presided over, the Socratic ‘entirely as a sacrificial duty, and loathed it’. This may well be an exaggeration, since Lewis appears to have enjoyed above everything else occasions giving scope to the rapid cut and thrust of spoken controversy. John Lawlor, another pupil, has recorded that argument was the only form of conversation ever employed ...”

“... ever managed to become accepted as providing the model for ‘correct’ speech.) Be that as it may, it would of course be grossly misleading to suggest that in England people do not care much about their language, or that they have no views about what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. Floods of letters to the BBC, not to mention regular complaints in ...”

“... wrong. Although he correctly predicted the dates for the major offensives in the West in April and May 1940, he had several times cried wolf before that. This was not Oster’s fault – Hitler’s personal whim or unfavourable weather caused the cancellation of several intended attacks – but one can hardly blame the politicians and civil servants who ...”

“... head was patted. ‘If you go on as you’ve begun,’ said the bloated biographer, ‘you may live to be a Bozzy yet.’ Preposterous, and risible: but the anecdote is as memorable as that of the young Walter Scott meeting Robert Burns in the house of Adam Ferguson. Edinburgh from the 1770s to the 1790s was Boswell’s to a far greater extent than ...”

“... belief in the arbitrary or culturally relative nature of beauty based on mathematical proportions may not have been a false trail. But what is the alternative? In his Ancient Theology (1972), Professor D.P. Walker discussed the Renaissance argument that God had revealed certain Christian truths to pagan sages such as Plato and Zoroaster. The argument was ...”

“... paintings that Fried discusses), both concentrate intently on what they are doing, and yet one may seem to be improving his shining hours, another wasting them. My point is not, of course, that we are to understand the painting of opposed absorptive states, industrious and idle, in the simple terms that would believe that an 18th-century public would have ...”

“... counter-action strengthens Macfarlane’s case: but positive respect for the law and its sanctions may not be as crucial as he maintains. How violent was early modern England as a whole? In answering this question firmly in the negative, Macfarlane is generally persuasive, but our satisfaction should be tempered by two considerations: he has overstated the ...”

“... no less than 655. Great Writers indeed. Timothy Dwight, born in Northampton, Massachusetts 14 May 1752: ‘In his own time Timothy Dwight was a figure of towering significance.’ Arthur Murphy, born in Clomquin, Roscommon, 27 December 1727: his comedy The Upholsterer was produced in 1758, Alzuma in 1773. And while we are on the drama, let us remember ...”

“... bold assumption. Strangely, neither of these historians has examined the possibility that Ptolemy may have kept a journal of his own. He was a literate man, even if not an admired stylist – his books probably formed the nucleus of the Library of Alexandria founded by his son – and there seems no reason why he should not have written up his diary within ...”

“... when we try to estimate the quality (not just the fact) of his attraction to Fascism. It may be true that Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 disgusted Yeats and turned him against the Italian dictator. But that does not explain the nature of Yeats’s initial fondness for the idea of authority embodied in Italian Fascism and in the Action ...”