“... which is illustrated in the book, and some of his Welsh landscapes. I don’t care for his stained glass, though churches are always proud when they have a Piper window, the latest (and no more pleasing than the rest) glimpsed at Paul Scofield’s memorial service in St Margaret’s, Westminster. For all that, though, the book is immensely readable, drawing ...”

“... was cast in brass and sculpted in stone and ivory, depicted on carpets, tapestries and stained-glass windows, and in multiple woodcuts and engravings. My favourite is Hans Baldung’s from 1515. A smirking, corpulent Phyllis sits side-saddle, naked save her hat, whip in one hand, reins in the other, a bit in the mouth of her buff steed. The story is meant ...”

“... was an example of one of the government’s most interesting social programmes: small, two-storey glass cubes built in run-down areas. From the outside they look like tech offices inexplicably dropped in a slum, but the cubos are in essence miniature public libraries. Inside this one was a meeting area with a couple of tables, a children’s play area, books ...”

“... be. In Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture 1748-1818, Ruth Perry examined the make-up of the family in the early years of the novel. ‘Despite the emphasis on marriage and motherhood in late 18th-century society,’ she writes, mothers in novels of the period are notoriously absent – dead or otherwise ...”

“... looked at others as if he owned the world’. In his epic poem, Genesis, Harry is ‘the great cut-glass chandelier in whose light all objects shone or were dark’. He was a philanderer, which Rose hoped to cure by the simple expedient of making him a father. But her husband had mixed feelings about children and Rose required an operation before she could ...”

“... Coward’s; later she suggested that I might become a couturier. My sister was named Jacqueline Ruth: in later life her friends called her Jackie, but at home she was always Jac.When my father came out of the Army he got into the same kind of work as all his brothers. At first, Abe, the eldest, decided to be a dentist and changed his surname to Murray so ...”

“... blow up the Houses of Parliament.) Sentenced to life imprisonment, he would eventually become what Ruth Dudley Edwards described as ‘the spider at the centre of the conspiratorial web’ that would lead to the 1916 Rebellion in Dublin more than thirty years later. He was, in her words, ‘able, vengeful, focused, selfless and implacable’.Clarke’s time in ...”

“... and sound, vaguely ennobled by the conversation, and avid (even as one sips discreetly at one’s glass of Sancerre) to hear as much about other people’s bad behaviour as one can. The windswept prison cell on Jersey – the one with the deserters and Claude Cahun – seems far away indeed.Yet a reader looking for extenuating circumstances – an excuse for ...”

“... When the Act was passed, Diane Munday, one of the leading campaigners, only drank half a glass of champagne to celebrate, because the job was only half done. She knew that until all legal sanctions were removed the right to abortion would remain precarious. Her view has been borne out: there have been repeated attempts by MPs over the past fifty ...”