“... outside her marriage; no evidence, either, that Eliot, until his second marriage, to Valerie Fletcher in 1957, when he was 68 and she 30, ever in his life had sexual relations with anyone other than Vivienne. Seymour-Jones wants desperately to prove that Eliot was homosexual before the marriage and that in large part the marriage failed because of his ...”

“... When​ T.S. Eliot asked John Hayward in February 1938 to act as his literary executor (‘in case some unexpected calamity cuts me down like a flower’), he told him to prevent publication of his literary remains – including ‘any letters at all of any intimacy to anybody’. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘I have a mania for posthumous privacy ...”

“... states such as Ukraine have no choice but to submit to the nearest great power, has run its course.John Mearsheimer’s argument of recent weeks that what we are seeing played out is ‘not imperialism [but] great-power politics’ will strike many as a distinction without a difference. Imperial history has far more to teach us than our decaying Atlantic ...”