“... should be left at his side.) Or perhaps it is both simpler and more complicated. ‘Writing,’ Simon Goldhill declares in his slippery new book about the Bensons, ‘is a pathological response to being in a family.’ There are​ other questions worth asking. Why do we care? What exactly is the point of the Bensons? ‘A very odd brotherhood,’ the ...”

“... which, though emotionally logical, I doubt you would guess (and which I shan’t give away). Simon Leys, that wise Belgian Sinologist, critic and novelist, rightly notes, in The Hall of Uselessness, Simenon’s ability to achieve ‘unforgettable effects by ordinary means. His language is poor and bare (like the ...”

“... detail and anecdotes, shrewd in its assessment of personalities, light on socioeconomic change. Simon Potter’s is more academic and astringent. Potter tends to be critical where Hendy is indulgent, but Hendy’s volume is more fun, while Potter’s occasionally dips into right-minded solemnity. They both more than earn their place on the ever lengthening ...”

“... candidate in the London Mayoral Election, right across the river from the crumpled buttock of City Hall. Which is neither a hall, nor in the City, but an architectural doodle with the perverse ambition of bringing Manhattan to Bermondsey. ‘We’ve got mile after mile and acre after acre of land for our future ...”

“... Baker’s only contribution to the genre of the parody-anthology. I don’t quite want to say to Simon Brett that he should come back because all is forgiven, but at least his Faber Book of Parodies (1984) wasn’t a breath of fresh air. The field is still held by Dwight Macdonald’s Parodies, first published here in 1961 and going stronger than ...”

“... I struck Exmoor’, whose conversation would have been understood by ‘any man of the period of Simon de Montfort’, although not, alas, by Morton himself. A modicum of realism ensures the text is read as reportage. Here the accompanying photographs help, as does the occasional moment of comic bathos, when indigestion spoils a view, a local dialect is ...”

“... of Saddam Hussein remain unknown, but Tony Benn is alive and well and coming soon to a concert hall near you. Leaving Parliament in 2001 to devote more time to politics, Benn joined the B-list of political celebrities. He has appeared at the Glastonbury Festival and boasts his own website (www.tonybenn.com). As Tony Blair’s Government spins itself ...”

“... were warped in their image.‘Every Saturday night we had ballroom dancing in the great marble hall,’ said Caroline, ‘and the headmistress sat drumming her fingers, with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth and a glass of crème de menthe. We had to dance with her father, who’d been wounded as a sapper in the First World War: either he had his ...”

“... the early 1950s when tourism was not yet an option. I walked through King’s, past Clare, Trinity Hall and Caius and then through the back gate of Trinity and out into Trinity Great Court and thought that this was how all cities should be. Nothing disconcerted this wondering boy and I even managed to find the smell of old dinner that clung to the screens ...”

“... and a disgusting drip.’ The physicalist party, note, is not always for celebrating the body. Simon Schama in his introduction says that Porter ventures where most historians fear: into Greek metaphysics, Christian theology, Cartesian philosophy. My complaint is that he sets out on this brave journey but then does not go far enough. The broad ...”

“... was on the point of getting betrothed when he finally premiered King Lear. (She married Dr John Hall in 1607, the year between Lear’s performance at court and its publication.) Biographers have pointed out, too, that Shakespeare had a younger brother called Edmund, who followed him to London and into the theatre business. Did Shakespeare name the ...”

“... professor of historical and comparative jurisprudence at Oxford and finally, master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Maine appeared to have shown Victorians how Europe, and Britain in particular, had achieved social and political modernity through the evolution of law and political institutions. He charted this progress from the original village ...”

“... class’. Grandfather was a carpenter and undertaker, who made enough money to build a mission hall and see his son, Michael Foot’s father, established as a solicitor, and then as a famous Liberal MP. His sons, after the First World War, went to public schools and Oxbridge and ‘won entry into a political élite’. ‘Castle Foot’ was now ...”

“... president and governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre over many years and supported both Peter Hall and Peter Brook at a time when their avant-garde work frequently brought storms of criticism. He had a voracious appetite for both English and French literature and liked to hunt down French novels on the Left Bank. In most un-Tory fashion, he formed an ...”

“... a pond with fish he’d caught from the Thames. ‘J.M.W. Turner and Walter Fawkes at Farnley Hall’ by John Wildman (c.1822) When Turner stayed with his patron and friend Walter Fawkes at Farnley Hall, north of Leeds, he fished on the River Wharfe and shot on the moors. He painted or drew what he caught or killed ...”