“... as rational, calculable and rule-bound. The polarity operates clearly in an epigram coined by Sir John Davies in 1594: Publius, student at the common law, Oft leaves his books, and for his recreation, To Paris Garden doth himself withdraw, Where he is ravished with such delectation, As down among the bears and dogs he goes; Where, whilst he skipping ...”

“... English Reformation Zoologically Illustrated’ was one of the most striking exhibits at Walton Hall. ‘Titus Oates, Cranmer and Bishop Burnet were illustrated from reptiles of the lowest order,’ while ugly monkeys stood in for other Protestant worthies. Characteristically, Aldington’s book includes an appendix listing the errors of earlier biographers ...”

“... were awkwardly placed in mid-Victorian Kensington. Their friends included the ageing Radical John Bright and Elizabeth Gaskell’s widower, William. But smart society was closed to them and this was something that Beatrix’s mother, Helen, seems to have minded deeply. A grim-faced little woman, she apparently occupied herself entirely with a round of ...”

“... verse novel cum autobiography which Taylor sees as having affinities with Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’. The main character is Jones’s idealised version of himself as the aristocrat beset by misfortunes who turns to the people, who give him the love he craves. From My Life to the writing of Chartist poems was a shorter step than it may seem. In his search ...”

“... The constituency included Hull University, which had an active New Left led by academics such as John Saville, a historian and founder with E.P. Thompson of the New Reasoner, a forerunner to New Left Review. Many trade unionists and working-class Labour supporters, who Gott hoped would be responsive to his criticisms of Wilson’s leadership, also lived in ...”

“... have cruised down the Lea Valley from Lippitt’s Hill Camp at High Beach, a base right beside John Clare’s Epping Forest asylum, and they’ll be back again tomorrow. Sukhdev Sandhu, who flew with the sky cops for his book Night Haunts, called the experience ‘the panoptic sublime’. The machines cost half a million pounds each, a sum that pays for a ...”

“... use – it’ll be ‘pooled’. The Guardian is getting three British embed places. The briefing hall is crammed with journalists, photographers and camera operators. There are no windows. It’s close and humid. The US colonel doing the briefing keeps referring to ‘embedding for life’, meaning that journalists are expected to stick with their assigned ...”

“... weakness of the government’s response, in 2019 when the Cube, a nearly new seven-storey student hall of residence in Bolton (it opened in 2015) was devoured by a fire that spread with frightening speed from the fourth to the sixth floor via its cladding. The building was swamped with firefighters – almost one for each of the more than two hundred people ...”

“... they discerned the ‘colouring’ and ‘diction’ of Shakespeare’s younger contemporary John Fletcher, rather than Shakespeare himself, in the play. Others objected that as for ‘the tale of this play being built upon a novel in Don Quixote, chronology is against us, and Shakespeare could not be the author.’ This last, at least, Theobald was able ...”

“... of men like Eliot. But I find it much more strongly represented in such a post-Eliot poet as John Ashbery, who seems to me a true poet of distraction. The back cover of the 1985 paperback of his pleasing and elegant Selected Poems carries a handful of laudatory quotations from previous reviews. What is remarkable is how often they reflect, presumably ...”

“... penser, but in vain. His next intervention was typically unexpected. In 1972, the English Marxist John Lewis published an article in Marxism Today (which was a response to a lecture by Graham Locke, an English friend of Althusser’s). Althusser’s reply was surprisingly full and detailed, and it is ironical that the Réponse à ...”

“... at all between knowing you want to pee and then just peeing. I was at Plimpton’s funeral in St John the Divine not long ago, and they sat me near the front, you know. Suddenly, I had to go. I knew I wasn’t gonna make it all the way down the aisle so I spotted a little side door and I got the canes and nipped in there. Halfway down the corridor, I was ...”

“... had been the chairman of Eurotunnel, was appointed to run the Strategic Rail Authority, created by John Prescott in 1999 to give direction to the privatised industry. Morton commissioned a report from Atkins and Ernst & Young to assess whether there was a need for such a line. By the time they reported in 2003, Morton – who was too outspoken to occupy such a ...”

“... of starting a novel on page 72, or dropping into the Old Vic mid-Hamlet (though perhaps music hall worked the same way; was that the origin of the movie habit?), and not even the smallest child would let anyone get away with starting their bedtime story halfway through, but the flicks were looped, both on the projector and in our minds. You went in, saw ...”