“... power. And that seems to me to lead to the core of his importance. He is nearer to Schiller and Hugo than to Shakespeare or Goethe, an oratorical rather than a poetic genius. Hildegard Freifrau Hugo von Spitzemberg, the greatest diarist of the previous generation in Germany and the mother of one of Kessler’s ...”

“... however, after the gambling episode at Baden, Apollinaria had fallen into the arms of a handsome young Spanish medical student called Salvador. Here, she felt, was the true and nobly spiritual encounter, but unfortunately Salvador had other ideas. After servicing her a few times he made his excuses, and avoided her determined attempts to cling on to ...”

“... showering them with concern – was recognisably the same person of whom Jim Prior complained to Hugo Young in 1981: ‘She hasn’t really got a friend left in the whole cabinet. One reason she has no friend is that she subjects everyone to the most emotionally exhausting arguments; the other is that she still interrupts everyone all the time. It makes ...”

“... than draughty Cambridge and richly-upholstered Vienna on either side of the turn of the century. A Young Girl’s Diary was first published in Vienna in 1919 by Hermine von Hug-Hellmuth, a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. It was supposed to be what it says it is: an original document, the diary of a Viennese schoolgirl from the age of 11 to the age ...”

“... topic of feminism, a group of central characters turn to lighter things: ‘Over coffee, Paul, Hugo and Kate took refuge in gossip about that perennially interesting topic, the editorship of the New Statesman, lapsing into the parochial and the malicious in a way that certainly amused them, if not their guests.’ The principals in this novel belong to ...”

“... that almost unravels the whole saga, or at least shows how close the saga came to unravelling, the young Nelson spots what he calls a ‘suspicious-looking vessel’ off the coast of Corsica. The boat contains Bonaparte, his mother, his sister and his three brothers, although of course Nelson can’t know this. He asks his senior officer for permission to sink ...”

“... only in his choice of subjects (four operas based on Schiller, three on Shakespeare, two on Victor Hugo, two on Byron), but in a breadth of grasp, human and historical, which sometimes outdoes his source: this in both text and music, for Verdi was virtually his own librettist and used Francesco Maria Piave as a mere versifying dogsbody. Verdi and ...”

“... visit to Persia; never one to rebel against her parents’ wishes, she broke the engagement. (The young man, Henry Cadogan, was drowned not long after her departure.) Freya was jilted by the Italian doctor to whom she became engaged during the First World War; and, according to her own account (though this has never been confirmed by the man’s family), she ...”

“... at the corner of the place des Vosges that I used to drop into after visiting the Musée Victor Hugo or the Follains’ apartment, completely transformed into a chic newly antiquated tea-shop. Got a last free table before queues started. Dinner 8.30 chez Jean-Claude and Annick. Other guest a young poet, Jacques ...”

“... the same passion for L.B.,’ Liszt wrote to Countess Marie d’Agoult, his first mistress. ‘Hugo called Virgil the moon of Homer; when I flatter myself, I tell myself that I shall perhaps one day be B’s.’ I like to think, mostly on the basis of conservatory gossip but also because of the ‘physical aversion’ to women Liszt keeps mentioning in his ...”

“... like J.K. Huysmans’s À Rebours (1884), nor an anguished anticipation of modernity like Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos Letter (1902) or Rilke’s Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910) or Gottfried Benn’s Brains (1916), but really stuck – and stuck in every sense – in the middle. The gist of it was written down when Valéry was ...”

“... delinquency’; Margaret Forster thought it less a novel than the script for a video nasty. Young male novelists routinely seek to give maximum offence. Martin Amis did so in 1975 by calling a novel Dead Babies. In The Wasp Factory Banks recounted acts of child-on-child sadism in a deadpan. Holden Caulfield monologue which suggested that serial killing ...”

“... had become a philosopher, had withdrawn to his country house (a hole in the trunk of a large young elm), where he lived as a hermit devoting all his time and care to the education of his only son. The young rat, who had not yet received those severe but salutary lessons that experience gives, was a bit thoughtless; the ...”

“... its official history seems to need the reassurance of those novelists – Stendhal, Dumas, Balzac, Hugo, Zola – who tried their hand at storytelling.This anthology is the latest Penguin national showcase (volumes of Italian, Spanish and British stories have already appeared). It opens with a group of tales from the late 15th century, often seen as the first ...”

“... passive and docile, so nicer? (This was the implied message, and in the 1950s and 1960s, far fewer young women were convicted of crimes than their male counterparts.) Could this be a strength, or somehow disabling? I began reading and watching for clues. Resonances between historical individuals and larger than life mythological heroines gradually assumed ...”