“... Gould: a slick media campaign is not going to cause them to discover virtues in Neil Kinnock. It may be sad or even wrong that it is so, but it is so. The election in the two Oxford seats this time was a neat little microcosm of the dilemmas of Opposition. In Oxford East, Labour needed a swing of just 1.4 per cent to take the seat from the Tories, while in ...”

“... the Shakespeare corpus in the half-century during which its volumes were published. Arden 3, one may be sure, will be pushed along at a much faster clip, driven by the economic imperative for prompt return on Routledge’s investment. OUP’s patience with the OED must have been handsomely rewarded – in the very long run. The 125 ‘fascicles’ stanched ...”

“... slightly disdainful Londoners. Nothing is analysed in these terms. Fluctuations of personal wealth may result in sacrifice; beautiful houses or school fees can be jeopardised. But the characters’ assumptions, their vocabulary and ways of speaking don’t change. Their society is a backdrop for the exploration of relationships, but it is also a trap, an ...”

“... in the text; he even produces a refinement of them by claiming that although William Joyce may not have committed ‘high treason’, he was nevertheless guilty of what can be called ‘moral treason’. The most significant question of all, however, is whether it is still possible to use terms such as ‘patriotism’ and ‘treason’ in the old ...”

“... unaffected by this kind of attention. His brassiness has the hollow ring of insecurity. Perhaps we may thank Blackmur in part for the largely unfortunate increase in ‘content’ which the 40 Cantos written in the next seven years displayed. Pound had come to intellectual consciousness at the time of Fin de Siècle aestheticism and its hearty aftermath, and ...”

“... finally, on page 128, they had a daughter, Katharine Houghton Hepburn. Kate junior was born on 12 May 1907. She had an energetic childhood, was encouraged by her father to be sporty and by her mother to be outspoken. She climbed trees and shoved balloons saying ‘Votes for Women’ into the hands of strangers. In the spring of 1915, Charlie, Tom’s eldest ...”

“... photographs of Victorian labourers – are democratic and populist in their implications. Radicals may fear that resurrectionism domesticates the past and robs it of its horrors, but to conservatives living history can appear worryingly subversive. Samuel quotes a poignant letter to the Daily Telegraph from a visitor to HMS Victory at Portsmouth who found that ...”

“... than might be expected: the Party has not been wholly captured by the Right. In years to come it may not matter who captures it. The most important finding of the book is that the Conservative Party in the constituencies is withering away. Constituency parties steadfastly refuse to disclose their membership figures to Central Office, and exact statistics are ...”

“... to ‘the insouciant calm under pressure that eight hundred years of history gave a 14th earl’ may suggest an unduly deferential image of Alec Douglas-Home – the name to which he was born and to which he reverted between 1963 and 1974, before retiring from politics as Lord Home of the Hirsel. It was under the courtesy title of Lord Dunglass that he first ...”

“... Several contributors agree with Nussbaum that patriotism often masks pride and even jingoism, and may rest on an assumption of the uniqueness and exceptionalism of one’s own country and culture. Martha Nussbaum’s critics, however, offer thoughts both troubling and telling. There is, for one thing, the theoretical problem of deriving consensual values ...”

“... though that is a factor. From their first day in the classroom, however gifted or dedicated they may be, at the back of their minds our teachers know that a million of the richest, most influential and frequently most educationally discerning parents in the country will go to any lengths not to send their children to the schools where they teach. They will ...”

“... require a mechanic head, a light nice hand and a strong sight. If he understands his Business, he may have Bread almost any where.’ Sobel is fairly reliable on horological technique and has some very good sources, too, notably the stunning lecture delivered in 1935 by the ex-naval officer Rupert Gould, who spent a dozen years after the First World War ...”

“... recognised. At their peak in the 1650s his almanacs sold up to 30,000 copies a year. From them he may only have netted a modest £70 a year (enough for a gentleman to live on), but they served to advertise his astrological practice, from which we have the surviving records of many thousands of consultations. Lilly advised the rich, famous and powerful; among ...”

“... friend, the economist Graham Hutton. The fact that the early Statesman had no fixed party abode may have helped its fortunes at least as much as it harmed them. At the start, the Webbs, Shaw, Sharp and most contributors held firmly to the view that the Parliamentary Labour Party had little to offer their kind of political rationalism, being composed largely ...”

“... speeches, in an era when the Commons regularly debated deep into the night after dinner, may have owed something to such refreshment, partaken by himself as much as his cheering listeners. Jenkins, observing a pattern of sick headaches, keeping the great man in bed on the morning after such exertions, goes to the length of doubting the doctor’s ...”