“... however, could never withstand much critical scrutiny. It certainly doesn’t receive much in Peter Conrad’s encyclopedic new study of artistic creation. For one thing, God’s act of creation is from nothing, which can scarcely be said of Mansfield Park or Dead Babies. Like cooking or carpentry, art requires raw materials. Conrad misses the point that ...”

“... the last war it was Connolly and Koestler and Spender, William Plomer, Alun Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Peter Quennell. Some still have life or fame or both, some not: but then, not now, was their moment. Was Connolly himself any good as a writer? The question means little because the point of Connolly turned out to be Connolly not producing the masterpieces which ...”

“... and congregations dressed as he supposes Judas to have been at the moment of the Crucifixion, and keen to defend his actions against what he knew would be the enraged accusations of his auditors. For he does not believe that Judas was a bad man or a traitor. In his book he describes at length his ‘quest for the historical Judas’, believing that the ...”

“... plot to get rid of Scott. Despite support from the militant Young Liberals (whose former chairman, Peter Hain, insisted that ‘we are with you in resisting the politics of smear and innuendo’), Thorpe resigned as Liberal leader in 1976, soon after Newton’s conviction. He lost his seat in the 1979 general election and was put on trial (along with his ...”

“... man was to fight if needed. Early Tudor Englishmen liked military kit, even if they weren’t so keen on actually using it. Increasingly sophisticated guns became popular, as did armour, from the inexpensive almain rivet (plate armour manufactured in southern Germany) to the handsome gilded Greenwich armour favoured by the elite. As well as status and ...”

“... it seems there is seriously slack footnoting in much modern German and Italian scholarship. He is keen to establish that good footnote practice started much earlier than is sometimes supposed. The ‘ancestor of the modern scholarly apparatus of footnotes’ is said to be Peter Lombard in the first half of the 12th ...”

“... can turn into an addiction. The connection between this and other kinds of abuse is something that Peter Rushforth has been thinking about for a long time. In 1979 he published his first novel, Kindergarten, a short and desolate work which won the Hawthornden Prize. A meditation on ‘Hansel and Gretel’, the grimmest of tales, Kindergarten describes a world ...”

“... interpretations of the period by Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose, Steven Mullancy and Peter Stallybrass (among others) and a chapter on Othello. This is less a translation than a new study in its own right. One of the great virtues of Shakespeare’s Festive World is the scrupulous care with which its investigations are conducted. Arming himself ...”

“... Four possible candidates, varying in attainments, would be T.E. Lawrence, Robert Graves, Peter Fleming (perhaps both Flemings) and Richard Hughes. It makes no difference that Lawrence was half-Irish, the Flemings mostly Scottish, and Hughes partly Welsh. The presidential or father figure of the group would be John Buchan, another Scot, whose innings ...”

“... decency nor even polemical coherence: it is, in every way, a bad book. And it is a fascist book. Peter Alexander, in his biography, dismisses the charge that Campbell was a fascist as a ‘slur’: he was, says Alexander, merely a political simpleton. That’s true, certainly: but then, fascism is a simpleton’s politics, and Campbell took to it ...”

“... infects one’s impressions of the biography. And Rex, like Charles, seems to have been far too keen to please dreadful people. He was the son of a builder and a vicar’s daughter (a social disjunction preserved in the children’s vocabulary – she was always ‘Mother’, he ‘Daddy’). He was a gifted child, and used his gifts to amuse in a gentle ...”

“... the exquisite bodhisattvas watching you on your way through reinforce the point the Eye was always keen to make, that post-imperial Britain is a sorry spectacle. Other cartoons on show, mostly familiar, come from dozens of the Eye’s contributors, including the superb Ed McLaghlan, Michael Heath (Great Bores of Today etc), Ken Pyne, whose National Association ...”

“... to directing (Triumph of the Will as well as two films about the Berlin Olympics); her marriage to Peter Jacob; and finally the end of the war, which brought a temporary end to everything that had once given her life meaning. She had become friendly with Hitler and scheduled the premiere of one of her films to coincide with his birthday, and she had been ...”

“... a furious letter back to Blair, who was in Tuscany, and this elicited an anxious phone call from Peter Mandelson trying to smooth things out. The main plan seemed to be to stop Margaret talking to the press. The spin doctors might as well have tried to stop the earth from turning on its axis. Margaret had begun to sense her power. Robin was being difficult ...”

“... The Bronze Horseman of Pushkin’s famous poem is Falconet’s equestrian statue of Peter the Great in St Petersburg. It was ordered by Catherine the Great (Petro primo Catharina secunda). Modelled on the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, it was meant to evoke the wise emperor extending a main protectrice. Joseph de Maistre commented that one doesn’t know whether this hand protects or threatens ...”