“... Morning Post unearthed Some murders I’d devised A Polish organ of finance At once apologised. Lord Robert Cecil’s Report – in effect, the report of the Select Committee’s opposition members – was published, like the Select Committee Report itself, in June 1913. The three censures on Samuel contained in it illustrate vividly that ...”

“... an alphabetical card index which occasionally included physical mementos. There were records for Lord Alfred Douglas, Steward’s lips landing ‘where Oscar’s had been’; for Thornton Wilder, who lasted ‘ninety seconds and a dozen strokes’; and the 18-year-old companion of the ageing André Gide, offered up in a bedroom lit only by a ‘frilly little ...”

“... estate: ‘No one can or should excuse himself from bearing arms in a just cause, whether for his lord or for his lineage or for himself or for Holy Church or to uphold and defend the faith or out of pity for men or women who cannot defend their own rights.’ No one should excuse himself: the clear injunction is that the worthy man at arms (the prudhomme or ...”

“... wealth and, after he married Isobel, they had the Eno’s Fruit Salts fortune, too. His father, Lord Parmoor, formerly a Conservative MP, had been given his peerage by the Liberal Government just before the First World War, and after it he entered the first Labour Government in 1924, along with his brother-in-law, ...”

“... and Churchill liked one another and worked together perfectly, with Attlee taking charge of the home front. As Jago points out, he managed the difficult job of being loyal both to Churchill and to the Labour Party by being absolutely straight with both, saying that complete unity was necessary while the war lasted but that even in the course of the war ...”

“... never got to play as often for England as they should have done, because the selectors at Lord’s were too high-and-mighty to take the train to Taunton and get a good look at them. Underdown’s lingering resentment about this surfaces from time to time in his book and puts a bracingly keen edge on its argument that the dukes and other notables who ...”

“... of one another. Conservative philosophers have said much the same. In the 17th century, Lord Halifax affirmed that there was hardly a single proposition to be made which was ‘not deceitful, and the tying our reason too close to it may in many cases be destructive. Circumstances must come in.’ In the 18th, David Hume believed that ‘parties from ...”

“... to captain a county or Test side, even if he was an indifferent performer with bat or ball. Lord Hawke, who led Yorkshire to eight county championships and became England’s first official chairman of selectors, resisted the suggestion that Jack Hobbs should take over the team which was losing the Ashes with the words: ‘Pray God no professional will ...”

“... Jehovah Brothers, who confront him about his sexuality. The intervention leads to Jesse leaving home, moving to London and abandoning his hysterical mother.But Jesse felt like an outsider in his small community long before he was outed by the Brothers. Early in the novel, a flashback illustrates the prejudice he encountered growing up as a black kid in ...”

“... Mine is Annabel Tent. Nobody guesses it.A joke about the Queen Mother who in an old people’s home finds herself not treated with the proper respect. She approaches a nurse:QM: Don’t you know who I am?Nurse: No, dear, but if you go over and ask the lady at the desk she’ll probably be able to tell you.14 January. Most of the headlines this morning ...”

“... correspondents, Katharine Asquith and Diana Cooper: they seem to fear he might fall over. In his Home Guard uniform Russell resembles the lovable Godfrey of Dad’s Army, so that it is horrid to imagine what a beastly sergeant-major might say to him: ‘Well, well, what have we here? Is it a Womble? Is it Winnie-the-Pooh?’ In fact, Russell was always ...”

“... a chosen people, and that the same Providence which, in 1688, had delivered them from Popery at home had also entrusted them with a religious mission to fight their ‘natural enemies’, the agents of the Bishop of Rome across the Channel. This was a mission as attractive and as flattering to Dissenters as it was to Anglicans; and though it did not do away ...”

“... in Patagonia without a qualm; or at least without being disturbed for doing so when he came home. Mr Bligh’s Bad Language deals primarily with the mutiny of the Bounty, weaving the account in and out of an ethnographical discussion of life aboard men-of-war and of the political and spiritual life of the Polynesians, with great emphasis on their ideas ...”

“... for election. If the event remains memorable, it’s thanks largely to the Conservative candidate, Lord Archer, who betrayed no inkling of the perjury charges that would soon ditch his campaign and carry him off to jail. Instead, the irrepressible huckster proposed to take advantage of London’s recently introduced system of ‘red routes’ by establishing a ...”

“... road the wall is made of blackened stone. Beyond it is the cannery. We are walking uphill towards home. This is the geography I have purchase on. I don’t know left or right. This is a steep village and so I just know up from down. I just know there and back, what’s before me and what’s behind. St Charles Borromeo, behind me, is called ‘our ...”