“... and mainly concerns the third generation of the Tallentire family, known from previous novels. Douglas, a successful media man and writer, is the book’s eye and conscience. There’s much of family interest, pregnancy, a death, tentative courtship, infidelities, the mother’s consolations in church-cleaning; and some specialised interest about working ...”

“... September 1894, and that Henry communicated the news of this discovery to his superiors the next day, it is remarkable that nothing happened for more than a week. Everyone believed that the document revealed the existence of an officer who was supplying the German Embassy with secret military information, but no one seems to have had any information about ...”

“... in the most unlikely places, but in an extraordinarily confused and baffling way. On the right, Douglas Hurd and other ministers have extolled the ‘active citizen’ – by implication, at any rate, a comfortable suburbanite impelled to good works by his or her own public spirit. At the centre and on the centre-left, a disparate band including Paddy ...”

“... most EU laws into UK law; without it the UK would not have a functioning legal system on Brexit day. The withdrawal bill will enable powers currently controlled by Brussels to be repatriated to Britain. However, under Clause 11 of the bill, even powers in devolved areas will return to Whitehall first, and UK ministers will then decide if they should return ...”

“... rink was covered with a glass roof, which, someone discovered too late, had the effect, on a fine day, of melting the ice. A new canopy had to be erected. Stories like this were repeated ad nauseam. Although these developments were joint operations, a common feature of almost all of them was that the Church bought out its partners at an early stage and at a ...”

“... happening,’ he told her.‘Today and tomorrow all hell is going to break loose.’ But the next day he was found dead, his pockets stuffed with bank-notes and weighed down with stones, hanging from Blackfriars Bridge. Financial scandal seemed to have been completed by murder, and the stage set for sensational happenings. But as Rupert Cornwell, the Rome ...”

“... the spirits of faithful cavalrymen retire on fulfilling their earthly duties, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig might sympathise. In a war of epic proportions, waged against a tenacious and skilful adversary, Haig delivered decisive victory. But as a guarantor of lasting personal glory, victory did not suffice. Throughout the ordeal of 1914-18, Haig commanded ...”

“... willing him, through him Birling the earth. A surge, a rebirth Hurried him on. Each hour, each day Rushed further away. As he slept, stock still, Every path, track, hill, housing estate, landfill Site, every dawn, noon, night Shot past faster, a happy disaster, a true Gift of the gods, a one-off, out of the blue, Till waving children, doe-eyed does, sped ...”

“... met him in 1947 when I became a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. By chance, on my first day there, we happened to eat at the same table in the refectory and we continued to eat together for the rest of the academic year. He described himself as being ‘très fatiguë’ the result, he said, of a long period as a prisoner of war in Germany. He had ...”

“... Robert Schuller is anything to go by) the satellite channels of a united Europe may one day broadcast the gospel of individual salvation which its inhabitants have long thought fit only for their American cousins. It is worth remembering that the social evolution of Europe may be towards, rather than away from, the social conditions which have ...”

“... long winter between the Battle of Alamein and the Normandy invasion. At the time, the 24-year-old Douglas had pretty much recovered from wounds inflicted by German 88s in the Western Desert and by spring he was back in action. On 9 June, three days after landing in France, he was killed behind enemy lines. We can trace the beast to a passage in From Alamein ...”

“... without the ‘very’. A poet called Lord Alfred Tennyson, not to be confused with Alfred Lord Douglas, briefly surfaces like the Kraken; the poem is here a Mort and there a Morte. Max Beerbohm’s parody of Henry James is readily and roughly transcribed: for ‘caught in her tone’, read ‘caught her tone’; for ‘feverish’, read ...”

“... biblical notion of uncleanness, though not for the reason she gives. In Purity and Danger, Mary Douglas identifies ‘unclean’ creatures as those that inhabit multiple realms and live between categories. That’s the source of their ‘danger’. The cormorant – which nests on the ground as well as in trees, and which flies, dives, floats and walks ...”

“... a paragraph of local news: ‘The Coroner was told that De Vere had been drinking heavily on that day. Death was due to inhalation of vomit.’ The story that Stow neatly tells is about the events leading up to that coroner’s verdict: but his way of displaying it suggests that he is attempting, as well as a skilful whodunnit, a stern comment on the ...”

“... Both this and the following statement are false. Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett’s book is well worth £9.95. One does not have to be a philosopher to realise that I have already gone further than a humble book-reviewer should. The value of the book under review is, you might think, a matter of opinion. Not so ...”