“... smile which is a great charm.’ Even across the width of a fairway, the author of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ was already melting under the impact of A.J.B. Lord Vansittart, a junior at the Foreign Office when Balfour was foreign secretary, confessed that he found it ‘hopeless to avoid devotion’. The secret of Balfour’s charm was his ...”

“... Langston (a middle name – he was baptised James, after his father). Mary’s next husband, Charles Henry Langston, was an abolitionist too; he insisted they name their son after Nat Turner, the leader of the 1831 Virginia slave revolt. His younger brother, John Langston, became one of the most prominent advocates for Black rights in the Reconstruction ...”

“... you do not consider Unitarians Christians.’ Coleridge’s reply was more or less urbane: ‘I hope, Madam, that all persons born in a Christian country are Christians, and trust they are under the condition of being saved; but I do contend that Unitarianism is not Christianity.’ Barbauld’s reported reply is unmoved by such subtleties: ‘I do not ...”

“... III sometimes did) against them. It was part of a ‘patriot’ language, which was used in the hope (generally vain) of mobilising independent Members of Parliament against any leadership it aimed to overthrow, and had some deeper implications important to the understanding of 18th-century ‘opposition’ and ‘republicanism’. But Burke was not a ...”

“... his children even more when they were ill or in difficulty (‘there is nothing ... so full of hope and joy to me as to see my children giving way to humiliation’), so as the claims of Alice’s ill health grew more pressing her share of parental attention steadily increased. ‘To be menaced with death or danger [has] been from time immemorial ... the ...”

“... of non-co-operation. Dorothy Comingore (now mostly remembered for her part as the second wife of Charles Foster Kane) had been disgusted by the friendly testimony of her ex-husband, Richard Collins. ‘So,’ she said, ‘I went out and had my hair shaved off.’ Comingore joined the picket line outside the HUAC sessions in Los Angeles, appeared as an ...”

“... who put the case most fervently for her generosity, tolerance, humanity, and her universalism: Charles Péguy, the socialist utopian and author of the long miracle play, Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc, which he dedicated to her and ‘à toutes celles et à tous ceux qui auront vécu leur vie humaine’. One of the speakers was Florence Delay ...”

“... banks in Europe and the US have generally got their money back. Because investors have reason to hope this will continue to be the case, they are prepared to lend banks money on terms far more favourable than they would insist on if banks genuinely were ordinary commercial enterprises. In part because debt seems cheaper than equity, the composition of ...”

“... sharp, bold stories, children’s literature can be a form of distillation: of what it means to hope, to fear, to yearn, distilled down and down into a piece of concentrated meaning. But you cannot claim to be a magician and fail to produce the rabbit. Let us begin, therefore, at the beginning, with some beginnings:When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite ...”

“... of refrigerators. He’s blasting with warmth out back.Mason & Dixon is the story of two men, Charles Mason (1728-86) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-79). Both are drawn from history, as is the outline of their doings, and as are many of the acquaintances they happen upon en route. Mason begins the tale as an astronomer at Greenwich; Dixon as a journeyman ...”

“... women whose bodies have an enviable integrity and a fleshy, non-replicative beauty that razzes Charles Darwin.’ For Greer these are ‘failed women’, ‘spurious females’, and the chapter of The Whole Woman in which they appear, along with mainly male-to-female transsexuals, has the title ‘Pantomime Dames’. We might pause at that ...”

“... distance to the left as the 20th century drew to a close risked losing more votes than it could hope to gain. There is no way of measuring that risk. But was there something in the underlying changes which took place in British society in the half-century after Attlee’s prime ministership that irreversibly deprived of their electoral appeal the ideals of ...”

“... my toughest competitor – if not in content, only in style?’ he asked. ‘Prince Charles,’ he answered. ‘I’m thinking of becoming an entertainer,’ he also said. ‘Liza Minnelli gets $75,000 a night to sing, and I’m really curious as to how I would do.’ ‘Yes,’ Andersen wrote, ‘in the blockbuster 1999: Casinos of the Third ...”

“... only his name but his age as well. Larkin at Sixty can’t therefore do anything but make a reader hope for just that: a Portrait of the Artist. There are, it is true, a handful of pleasantly occasional photographs, and what seems in reproduction a surprisingly bad drawing of the poet, but the text may foil anyone whose ‘Larkin’ is the author of the three ...”

“... close relationship with Reagan to bring him back into line. That was something Kinnock could never hope to match: she had more clout in the White House than any other world leader, never mind a leader of the opposition. (This advantage was to be rammed home the following year when Kinnock paid a trip to Washington and Reagan’s team humiliated him ...”