“... Yes indeed.24 February. Last week Rupert and his whole office were thrown into confusion when for no reason at all the management inquired how many of the team could work from home. This was taken to be the prelude to some sort of shedding of staff. Today it transpires it’s less inimical than this, but rather a precaution. The coronavirus in Italy has meant ...”

“... one of the night – one that he had every reason to believe was the true one, another that he had no means of proving to be false.’Time passes more intensely in dreams. It is an RLS hallmark, the quicksilver evolution of thought and the fabular turn, the victory of original perception. He was born with what he later called an ‘internal theatre’, a mode ...”

“... appropriated me, their first-born, with his adoration that, when they had a second child, she had no alternative to loving her more than he did and more than she did me. She was so blithely innocent about normal human feelings that, all her life, when questioned about her maternal sentiments, she’d say: ‘Well, it’s natural for a mother to prefer her ...”

“... control their own fate: ‘We are out for life and all that life can give us,’ the revolutionary John Maclean said at his trial for sedition in 1918. George Square, 31 January 1919 My grandparents met at a Glasgow ILP branch sometime around the end of the First World War, and I’ve always had a rather romantic view of the party and of that ...”

“... that British new music – equally suspicious of European modernism and anything American, whether John Cage or Janis Joplin – wasn’t a club worth joining. Although he had no desire to take up 12-tone composition techniques, Arnold Schoenberg’s music appealed to him intellectually and he engaged with it seriously ...”

“... circuit, but he was less familiar with the recording studio. He was ‘terrible’, his producer John Hammond recalled: ‘Bobby popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered off mike.’ But in another sense he knew just what he was doing. The album was made in just six hours of studio time – two three-hour sessions – at a cost of around ...”

“... all that he has fed on. Literally, in the case of ‘A Dissertation upon Roast Pig’:There is no flavour comparable … to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, crackling, as it is well-called. The very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure … in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance – with the adhesive oleaginous – O ...”

“... it is just that ‘she has not taken the step yet … that is hers alone to take, the step from No to Yes.’ ‘The Pole’ tells the story of this step and what happens afterwards.Its trajectory is a kind of descent, as Beatriz falls from ledge to ledge of her resistances towards an outcome that she consciously refuses at every stage. She will on ...”

“... me should you be considering the inclusion of material by the above author. I am most anxious that no conflicts in policy shall get loose, not only to our embarrassment, but to yours also.’ Gamlin was a company man and he clearly got the point. ‘In spite of the desire voiced by some of the children who wrote,’ Gamlin replied, ‘I have ...”

“... immediate target was de Tocqueville’s countrymen, who seemed to have a talent for revolution but no corresponding talent for self-government; more broadly, its target was every anxious liberal who sympathised with the political and economic aspirations of the less favoured members of society, but feared their predilection for dictators, every liberal whose ...”

“... that one of the troubles with the Labour Party under Neil Kinnock’s leadership was that it was no longer the kind of party which attracted the loyalty and service of Oxbridge intellectuals. In his view, this was a serious flaw, perhaps even a fatal one. There is, of course, something in the charge. For all his many qualities, which include courage and ...”

“... to foster homes in the country was haphazard (‘I’ll take a girl, please – curly hair and no lice’), and mixed in outcome, for both children and hosts. But the bombing didn’t start for another year, after the ‘Phoney War’ had ended. At that point, in 1940, there was further evacuation, overseas to the Dominions. Most of us who were evacuated ...”

“... years when all Clough’s major poetry was composed – ‘Ambarvalia’, ‘The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich’, ‘Amours de Voyage’ and ‘Dipsychus’. Tom was a favoured confidant. One of Clough’s letters contained an MS version of ‘Say not the struggle nought availeth’, and Tom in large part supplied the model for the hero of ‘The ...”

“... the broken windows ... and the rain coming through the roof’ to Caroline Blackwood’s Dunmartin Hall (in Great Granny Webster), with puddles in the corridors and warped doors, the Anglo-Irish house has characteristically fallen a victim to disrepair. There are, of course, a good many symbolic points to be adduced from this. McCormack goes to some lengths to ...”

“... itself as a means of piercing behind the veil – an alternative to the religious faith that no longer provided the certainty for which Tennyson and his host of readers yearned. In 1855 an American medium, Daniel Dunglas Home, caused a sensation in Britain and on the Continent with a succession of séances, two or three of which were attended by ...”