“... to stand in need of (something salutary, but often not desired)’. Did not the great Goldsmith (Oliver, not Jimmy) write: Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long? Alas, the philistine committee, rationed to one brain per member, and wanting the sort of instant erudition which the SOED might have offered them, remained unimpressed by ...”

“... only three actors on stage, stick-figures in the distance – bowler, batsman and a wicket-keeper ready to stump him – supported by a whole chorus of fielders, dancing in a phalanx of 15. You are glad that these days actors are professionals, loud-voiced at least, terrifyingly loud, in fact, and that tomorrow Sophocles will not be repeating his error of ...”

“... in The Pioneers, which culminates in the marriage of Marmaduke Temple’s daughter Elizabeth to Oliver Effingham, scion of a family that, like the DeLanceys, had stayed true to King George. Somewhat implausibly, Effingham is also the adopted son of the Indian tribe that once lived on the land that came into the possession first of Effingham’s father, and ...”

“... at least well-intentioned. Now we have another decade of the self-interested and the self-seeking, ready to sell off what’s left of our liberal institutions and loot the rest to their own advantage. It’s not a government of the nation but a government of half the nation, a true legacy of Mrs Thatcher. Work is the only escape, which fortunately moves along ...”

“... be a public affairs specialist and each public affairs specialist should be a diplomat. We are ready to open wide the doors of the ministry.’ He even added: We criticise foreign correspondents and they criticise us. And thank God they do criticise us. This means that things are actually changing. What would have happened if, say ten years ago, someone ...”

“... Oliver Craske​ begins his biography of Ravi Shankar by telling an Indian parable. A blind man, stroking an elephant’s trunk, thinks he is holding a snake. Another blind man, running his hands along the animal’s leg, assumes he is touching a tree trunk; a third mistakes its tail for a rope. People’s response to Indian classical music is the same, Shankar told a press conference in London in 1966 ...”

“... German engineer responsible for the V2 rocket, never had launch troubles – amazingly, given what Oliver Morton in The Moon: A History for the Future describes as the ‘ludicrously powerful’ five F-1 engines at its base. At lift-off, the rocket weighed three thousand tonnes. ‘The shell of ice that had clung to the super cool metal,’ Morton ...”

“... century later they are still hanging on and are likely to outlive Harriet, who is now 53 and feels ready for death. Her husband and daughter have preceded her. Jack, the television journalist, and his daughter, who is a budding novelist – there is always one of these lurking somewhere in a Brookner novel – are the only characters credited with any lasting ...”

“... to be convinced that he had sexual intercourse with his male friends (with, for instance, Oliver Messel, of whom she said, in feigned anger, ‘I hope he sucks you dry’), and partly by her own brazen infidelities, which led to her having almost as many abortions as periods. She was good-looking. The divorce and its aftermath came on the last of the ...”

“... to talk he is not using real words and syntax. His thoughts are so clear and well-ordered and ready for expression that he can neither believe that he is not getting them across nor stop himself trying. He throws himself into the conversation with such verve and conviction that people tend to blame themselves for his failure to communicate. Dysphasia is a ...”

“... a smart answer: but if this should not happen, and no one should take any notice of her, she is ready to cry at the neglect.Sitting and waiting in the drawing room to be taken notice of soon becomes sitting and waiting in the assembly rooms (‘the bigger miss seats herself in public at a ball, expecting every moment to be chosen by some man for a partner ...”

“... outraged opinions in defence of ‘Rule Britannia!’ and against the BBC, escalating via Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, and up to the prime minister.The volume of headlines and op-eds railing against the corporation’s ‘woke’ agenda seemed to grow with each passing day. While Nigel Farage called for the BBC to be scrapped ...”

“... out some fundamental defects in Russell’s nascent Theory of Knowledge he told Ottoline he was ready for suicide, saying later: ‘My impulse was shattered, like a wave dashed to pieces against a breakwater.’ The episode caused him to conclude grimly: ‘I saw that I could not hope ever again to do fundamental work in philosophy.’ These words should ...”

“... it into pieces ‘with intent utterly to destroy the same’. Ducket’s disgrace reflects the ready equation of sin and scepticism in mainstream thinking. Required to express remorse for his errors, he was, according to Hunter, ‘made a scapegoat for a phenomenon of much wider cultural significance’.The scrutiny to which Hunter subjects each of these ...”

“... as leader of the Liberal Party instead of Gladstone ‘is hardly more plausible than the view that Oliver Stanley, a somewhat similar figure who died in somewhat similar circumstances in 1952, would have frustrated Harold Macmillan in 1957’. What of Gladstone as Palmerston’s Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1860s? ‘It is reminiscent of the position in ...”