“... Chula, who had been a Cambridge undergraduate when Runciman was a young don at Trinity. At a ball in Bangkok a dazzling young woman waved at him and he asked Chula who she was. ‘But you met him the other day. That is the Minister for Education.’ Unfortunately, discretion overcomes him where our own Royal Family is concerned: I seem to remember him ...”

“... Minister admits that the new system will be ‘a few notches’ below public service standards. George Russell, the proposed chairman of the Commission, believes that it will be equivalent to some 80 per cent of the existing public service broadcasting commitment. We are in for a tawdry future. The extent of the anxiety about that future can be measured by ...”

“... to marry. He was reserved, dull and apparently interested only in dogs – when she fainted at a ball during their engagement, he showed no concern, carrying on talking to his friends – though he did have an illegitimate daughter before he married. Still, he proved a better husband than Harriet’s choice, the cold and unpleasant heir of the Earl of ...”

“... Sinatra, his two daughters and Mia Farrow (to whom he was then engaged) were at another table. George, the restaurant captain, came over to the Dunnes’s table. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Dunne. Mr Sinatra made me do it,’ he said, and then he punched Dunne in the head. The Dunnes got up and left, and on the way out, ...”

“... of royal and aristocratic whim. Often they are stories of bizarre adoration, as in the case of George IV and his giraffe, which was captured as a calf in Sudan and sent north to Khartoum trussed up on the back of a camel. From there she was sent by boat to Cairo, on to Malta and then to England, where she arrived in June 1827 and was taken to Windsor. The ...”

“... 1772 (another piece of mystic and antique tradition, designed to prevent the ghastly offspring of George III from letting down the side) the Sovereign’s consent was required for a marriage of any member of the family who was younger than 25. After the quarter-century mark had been reached, things became simpler. All that was required was the consent of the ...”

“... anniversary has been taken calmly by his countrymen: with far less celebration than, for instance, George Eliot received in 1980. There is to be no British Library exhibition (although they hold significant manuscripts); no plaque in the Abbey (although Trollope was more devout than the other novelist); no portrait stamp, no commemorative pillar-box at Waltham ...”

“... that battle, he was adored as the saviour of Hanoverian Britain from Jacobites and papists. As George II’s soldier son, he was the ‘martial Boy’; for Drury Lane audiences, ‘The noble Youth, whom ev’ry eye approves/ Each tongue applauds, and ev’ry Soldier loves … Strength to his Arm, and Vict’ry to his Sword.’ Today, he is remembered only ...”

“... and disruptions: a heap of burning tyres, the insides of a hotel exposed by a wrecker’s ball, obliterated streets, broken glass and knotted durex. In a graphic metaphor Carson illustrates the impossibility of dissociating language itself from the live ammunition of the conflict. During a riot it rains not only nuts, bolts and nails, but ...”

“... guy. The Arkansas senator John McClellan was capable of a ‘kindness’ that few could notice, George H.W. Bush was (and remains) a gentleman and an honourable politician, Bob Dole could be ‘tough and mean in a fight’ but Clinton likes him. He would have liked more downtime with Tom DeLay, but DeLay did not believe in ‘consorting with the ...”

“... the introduction?’ ‘This is Nancy,’ Yvonne said. ‘This is Andy. This is Mildred. This is George. This is Isabella. This is Steve. This is Miss Lear. This is Remus and this is Caterina.’ She paused. ‘This is Peter,’ she said. Everybody laughed. One of the children threw a ball into the air and someone said ...”

“... origin than the dresser in question, including the spiralling walnut of 1700, the robust mahogany ball and claw feet of 1750, the more fragile members of delicately decorated satinwood which found favour later in the 18th century, and the massive scrolling rosewood of the Regency. This taste for antiques endured for a century, concurrent with the idioms and ...”

“... get to take it home. When the poet Liz Lochhead visited, she noticed a battered anthology of George Bernard Shaw’s plays she used to read when she was round at his flat; she asked to do a pencil rubbing of the embossed portrait of Shaw on its cover as a memento.One of the most extraordinary objects in the archive is a ledger that sits on the two-legged ...”

“... to the exercise of compassion). The need for sympathy in human relations had been central to George Eliot’s intensely moral interpretation of what art can do for us: ‘The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies,’ she wrote in her 1856 essay on ‘The Natural History of German ...”

“... they are talking about ambition, acknowledging strengths and weaknesses, they are keeping the ball alive.All music falling away, and the Hum. My father could no longer hear confessions. Could no longer stand as the god of the room, holding forth, certain that everyone was listening. That bullet still just whistling, hanging suspended in the air.It was ...”