“... whole seem to care, what is being kept from us. That is rather special; and a major factor, claims David Vincent in this path-breaking book, in our governance. It can have ludicrous effects. One was the refusal to acknowledge that we had any ‘secret services’: until recently, MI5 and MI6 had no official existence. Questions about them in Parliament were ...”

“... or immerse himself in it for too long, setting out on long walks and trips alone, as his alter ego David Copperfield does in moments of depression when society seems to offer only disappointment. A year after his admission to the Garrick, Dickens resigned from it. In each of the following three decades he would rejoin the Garrick and resign again in protest ...”

“... Armstrong’s pre-cancer physique probably had something to do with steroids, and the steroids may or may not have contributed to his getting cancer: we can’t know. In a conversation with his doctors during his cancer treatment that Armstrong now denies ever took place, but which two friends who were in the room at the ...”

“... it to the small screen. The British settings are spectacular, the whole thing like an implosion of David Kynaston, but the main achievement is Morgan’s, in finding ways to show the human side of monarchy. The British royals are a terrifying shower, but quite likeable, and sometimes essential, in their daftness, in their cunning and their opportunism, as well ...”

“... In a preliminary chapter called ‘Curriculum Vitae’ David Sylvester explains that he became interested in art when, at 17, he was fascinated by a black and white reproduction of a Matisse. He at once began to paint in oils, but soon discovered that he lacked talent and began to write about art instead, devoting himself thenceforth to the black and white of the page ...”

“... was two years from the signing of the Agreement, a period subsequently defined as ending in May 2000 – but no date was specified for starting the process. By contrast, the Executive was to be set up quite quickly. The Unionists were bound to be displeased with this interpretation of the timing of events. Some were not prepared to accept the absence of ...”

“... desire for unattainable precision and curious universal truths is also a Romantic trait, and it may be that some of the more ambitious forms of modern literary criticism will come to be seen as a late flowering of the Romantic spirit. When the various definitions are brought together, they tend to suggest that the Romantics were writers and artists who knew ...”

“... spared the worst effects of winter. But, as with depopulation, we are getting a glimpse of what may be to come. South Korea serves as a demographic warning to the rest of the world, in the way that, say, the Maldives does for climate change. These are the places where we can see what will happen if and when the waters close over our heads.Depopulation is at ...”

“... long timescale of global warming has often made it hard to mobilise a majority against damage that may occur decades, or even generations, in the future. That timescale no longer looks quite so distended, after the last few years of serial disaster – fire, storm and flood – but air pollution provides an even more urgent motive for change: millions are ...”

“... wilderness, Pym’s novel Quartet in Autumn had at last been accepted for publication: Larkin and David Cecil had independently named her as their choice of ‘most undervalued writer’ in the 75th-anniversary number of the TLS. As Pym’s diary records, they had kipper pâté to start, after sherry; and then ‘veal done with peppers and tomatoes, Pommes ...”

“... and from old materials thrown hurriedly together without a due attempt to ascertain what they may have lost of their value from age.’ The Shell Guide is not altogether in that category, although it is not much of a recommendation for the author to claim that he has relied in part on ‘books written by two magnificent Victorians, Edward Walford and ...”

“... Park Honan has done one of the two already, and now has done the other. Coming shortly after David Riggs’s solid, even too-solid The World of Christopher Marlowe, his Christopher Marlowe: Poet and Spy feels a little lightweight. He is probably right to say that he has a better story about Marlowe’s origins in Canterbury and his doings at Corpus in ...”

“... Foreign Parts. It bridges writing as different as the poetry of Carol Ann Duffy, Kate Clanchy or David Kinloch, and the fiction of Christopher Whyte or A.L. Kennedy. Some of these poets and novelists are wary of each other. Jamie recently refused to read with Irvine Welsh because of what she saw as the misogyny of one of his short stories. Yet even such ...”

“... would not have been welcome even if he had delivered it on time, in person and in sobriety, and may have been devised to sting the austere, abstemious Liliane.On one gala occasion Ramón and Liliane failed their children simultaneously. At the Comédie-Française on 16 April 1942, during the interval of Goethe’s Iphigenia in Tauris, Dominique was looking ...”

“... the Confessor and the Elder literally felt not to count – even though the latter’s mark may still be visible on the shire system of Central England. As for the Egberts and Oswigs and Cerdics, the incompetences of modern spelling have left them all unpronounceable, vaguely ludicrous. To this general picture of neglect and oblivion there is one ...”