“... Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of J.M. Barrie’s ‘Lost Boys’, in later life called Peter Pan ‘that terrible masterpiece’. Brigid Brophy, having reread Little Women and its sequels, dried her eyes and blown her nose, resolved that ‘the only honourable course was to come out into the open and admit that the dreadful books are masterpieces ...”

“... British Modernists – Vanessa Bell, Frederick and Jessie Etchells, himself, Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis, Helen Saunders and some others – at the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris, which was located on the ground floor of Poiret’s imposing residence at 109 rue Faubourg St-Honoré, next door to the Martine interior design workshop which served as the model for ...”

“... décor is revolting … rain drips sadly onto the oilcloth … sacrifice £3500’). As Jeremy Lewis observes, it was a remarkably handsome newspaper, much more spacious in its page layouts and crisper in its black/white contrasts than its rival, the Sunday Times, which looked untidy and grey by comparison. Throughout the 1950s it was the dominant ...”

“... gone from the drink. Details in Brideshead often have the penetrating enchantment they possess in Lewis Carroll or in Kafka. The chapel at the great house, with its Art Nouveau glass and trappings, is based on the church at Madresfield, the Lygon house near Bristol. But that is mere corroborative detail: much more in keeping with true Waugh fantasy is ...”

“... the livery of the messenger. When, now and again, an author does allude to the look of a page (Lewis Carroll’s ‘Mouse’s Tale’, Sterne’s marbled interfoliations) it is intended to be cheeky – as a flunky, standing behind the speaker’s chair at a grand dinner, would sound if invited to interject. Typography, the advocates of transparency ...”

“... Smith told Campbell that he did (‘When I see one of those Free Church ministers on the street in Lewis I feel like walking across the road and hitting him in the face ... It’s power they want, that’s all it is’), or any injustice of the last century in England being as alive as the Highland clearances are. Our world has been flattened and evenedout by ...”

“... sizing up the hills like a battlefield, unable to stop himself working out where to place the Lewis-guns for an assault on some lonely farm. But in the poem, ‘fear and shock’, or sudden death from the sky, mean freedom. Emotionally, ‘Rocky Acres’ anticipates the attitude familiar from ‘The White Goddess’, who is also to be found on top of a ...”

“... to within 3 per cent), dropping him off to take bearings at 54 degrees for the Isle of Man, 58 on Lewis, 61 in the Shetlands and 66 in Ultima Thule (all the evidence points to Iceland, against previous arguments for a trip ending in the Shetlands or the Baltic). Again, as for Herodotus with the Phoenicians, what provoked ancient incredulity carries most ...”

“... the Institute of Community Studies in Bethnal Green and did a series of studies from there with Peter Willmott and others, there was simply no adequate information on what most people might want from politics. This research – done, it is true, in the South-East, away from the areas of heavy industry – strengthened his conviction that there were no ...”

“... around £10 million and a congregation that includes Geri Halliwell, Bear Grylls, the former John Lewis chair Sharon White and the multi-millionaire Conservative donor Ken Costa.HTB’s approach is rooted less in exegesis than in religious conviction. ‘Enthusiasm is a big part of it,’ according to the writer Andrew Graystone. ‘You believe that your ...”

“... beautifully portrayed here, especially when so well placed against a sketch of his enemy Wyndham Lewis (who savages him in The Apes of God). Abdy, the Francophile Cornishman with a refined and well-satisfied taste for 18th-century objets d’art, had ‘the standards of an Augustan connoisseur’: ‘in one historical age alone would Bertie always feel a ...”

“... from time to time; John Muir of My First Summer in the Sierra, a farmer’s son and farmer; and Lewis Grassic Gibbon of A Scots Quair, a farmer’s son from the Mearns in north-east Scotland. All three produced work that strikes me as special – as important, if you like – because they saw the countryside and its people as part of human society, rather ...”

“... ready-dressed blue and silver faux-fir). For the unsure, there are ‘treetorials’ at John Lewis or ‘Christmas design consultation’ for £250. They’ll even decorate your tree for you. Most companies are cleverer with their own displays now, and recognise the opportunity for spectacle. You don’t even need the tree – just a surprising ...”

“... into the war.Just a few years before, Thompson had been most famous for her marriage to Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and for what her friends referred to as her ‘comico-terrible gaffe’. In 1931, when the Nazi Party was on the rise in Germany but had yet to secure a majority in parliament, Thompson had ...”

“... of Sporting Ladies (c. 1770) is typical of many entries from whores’ directories included by Peter Wagner in Eros Revived. Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, published regularly between 1760 and the early 1790s, prided itself on providing up-to-date information for the sporting gentlemen of London, including full details of starting prices and hot ...”