“... of one of his neglected patients sets off to the cemetery’. Unfair, because Rae suggests that he took more trouble than might have been expected over his patients, but Beerbohm had put his pencil on the interesting fact that Grace had done a great deal better in money terms as an ‘amateur’ cricketer than he could have hoped to do as a medical man, and a ...”

“... matter for argument whether by 1959 he was mellowing into a position of authority in the party: it took his death the following year to transform him into the maligned hero and inspiration of British socialism. From then on, an association with Bevan has been an asset to conjure with for an aspiring leader. Harold Wilson built his platform for the leadership ...”

“... there is little doubt that Neil Kinnock’s two speeches to the Labour Party Conference this year took much of their inspiration from the hard lesson he’d had of it as he watched the miners’ strike grind to its ineluctable defeat without being able to say much more than generalities about its conduct, trying vainly to pin responsibility on a government ...”

“... of its publisher (Murray), who wanted more advertisements. The editor, Charles Appleton, took the path of noble independence and destitution. The Academy paved the way for the TLS, in 1902. The conception of the paper marked a considerable surge of reactionary confidence. The ‘supplement’ tag with its implication of second fiddle was merely ...”

“... of language in speech or writing. Like Chomsky, Saussure wanted to get away from what he took to be the superficiality of mere databanks of linguistic facts: instead he wished to fix the rules, valid for all languages everywhere, without which there could be no language. His structuralism is psychological, as Chomsky’s is, and oppositional, or ...”

“... last. He was devoted to an adoring and possessive mother; but his adoration, unlike Lawrence’s, took the sensible line of keeping away from her as much as possible, although he wrote to ‘Bessie’ assiduously every day. He saw the humour as much as the pathos in unequal relationships: young as he is, Leo is aware of his adored Marion as a comic as well as ...”

“... with the optimistic view that higher education was the locomotive of economic growth. Thatcherism took an opposite view. It saw no correlation between the production of sociology graduates at Essex and cars at Cowley. In 1981, there began to be applied the Thatcherite-Joseph doctrine of ‘strength through starvation’. Cut and freeze were applied with the ...”

“... though the Dervish forces were massacred.) Such imperial dramas – the Zulus supplied another – took hold of the public imagination back home, supplying stirring preludes to the great anti-climax of the Boer War at the century’s end. Memories and legends were still potent when A.E.W. Mason wrote The Four Feathers, made into one of the first Korda colour ...”

“... as he saw them, that science offered. His response to Bergson’s half-hour peroration took less than a minute. Its pivotal declaration was: ‘Il n’y a donc pas un temps des philosophes’ – ‘The time of the philosophers does not exist.’ What Einstein said next was even more controversial: ‘There remains only a psychological time that ...”

“... they’re going to have trouble repaying their debts – debts which, to a large extent, they took over from the global banking system, to keep it solvent. As I argued when writing about the Greek crisis (LRB, 14 July), this is a huge problem for the eurozone in particular. The euro story has continued to evolve in the direction it was always likely to ...”

“... between blocks. I ask a group of boys playing football whether they can show me where the murder took place. Their spokesman is courteous and takes time to point out where I can find Hordle Promenade. When I ask him to clarify his directions he does so and then goes back to his game. It is now just before four o’clock. I stop and speak briefly to several ...”

“... I received my serious call to a life of devout tennis-watching in the year (1947) when Mr Kramer took the men’s singles championship at Wimbledon. His court personality was that of a Nice American Kid. (He still speaks of latterday players as ‘kids’, a term that sits on John Newcombe and Stan Smith as askew as on a ...”

“... lodge, and, when they failed to recant, to be racked in the Tower.’ He searched his friend John Petit’s house for heretical literature and left him in prison, untried. He applauded the burning of a harmless leather seller called John Tewkesbury, noting: ‘There never was a wretch, I wene, better worthy.’ And he ...”

“... of overlordship and secured recognition that Scotland was an independent sovereign entity. Bruce took the throne in 1306 after a long period of wrangling over the succession. The death of Alexander III in 1286 without surviving issue and the subsequent death in 1290 of his young granddaughter, Margaret, Maid of Norway, while she was being brought to ...”

“... covers the same period as this new collection; but there was plenty of work for the new editor, John Evans. The diaries were begun when Britten was 15 and ended, rather abruptly, when he was 25. They were written in pocket diaries, the earlier entries mostly fitting into the space allowed by the format, four days per page. As his interests widened Britten ...”