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“... is it in Sweden, Germany, Italy? In Sweden it’s 1949, as far as the publication date of Eyvind Johnson’s remarkable novel is concerned, but then things get a little complicated, because the novel is set in 17th-century France, and concerns the devils of Loudun – Aldous Huxley published his account of this celebrated case in 1952. In fact, we have to ...”

“... failed to protect his father in 1914; sometimes less so, as when he discharged part of his debt to David Lloyd George by appointing his son Gwilym to a post at the Ministry of Food (although the Minister, Lord Woolton, had already approached someone else). And as he firmly maintained that cross-Channel operations should be fitted into the framework of the ...”

“... Towards the end, I asked the table: ‘If it all goes wrong, who will you hate the most: Gove, Johnson, or Farage?’ Gove was beneath numerical notice; Johnson got seven votes; I put my own marker against Farage. In the context of Brexit, Johnson seemed to me just a ...”

“... but himself. If he is in earnest – and if he isn’t we’ll not bother with him, any more than David Trotter does – he thought that he was testing his society by moving out to the periphery of that society, speaking for and with the disaffected, the vagabonds, the ill-adjusted. How disconcerting, then, to find that the disaffection he thought he was ...”

“... Goldsmith as ‘an awkward, improvident and slightly ridiculous Irishman … whose genius [Johnson] nevertheless acknowledged and championed’ – though in fact almost every reference to Goldsmith in the Life of Samuel Johnson itself belittles him. Boswell was not alone. After Goldsmith’s death in 1774 stories of ...”

“... who played the game. McKibbin recounts how the young Tom Graveney (a Player) dared to congratulate David Sheppard (a Gentleman) on his century, and even called him ‘David’. Basil Allen, the Gloucestershire captain, rounded on Graveney – ‘He’s Mister Sheppard to you’ – and later called in at the Cambridge ...”

“... are also some somewhat drab woodcuts by Kurt Craemer. There is a lively introduction by Edgar Johnson. Bulwer’s book first appeared in 1834, when the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum were the object of great interest in this country. The discovery of the buried cities was by no means new. Interesting things had been found there as early as ...”

“... and blessed by Nigel Farage and Ukip. Vote Leave is led by Michael Gove, Gisela Stuart and Boris Johnson, with the support of other longstanding Eurosceptic ministers and former ministers, such as Iain Duncan Smith, Nigel Lawson and David Owen. Then there’s Grassroots Out, which was supposed to bring the other two lots ...”

“... David Gower was this year’s most popular victim, the English underdog, the handsome knight sacrificed by knaves. But good news is at hand: the hero has announced a brilliant season full of runs. In the tradition of General MacArthur, David Gower has announced his return. I hope he succeeds ...”

“... contract salmonella than Europeans.Which all sounds fair enough. On the other hand, Boris Johnson has to think of the good chicken farmers of Norfolk. And as for British consumers, they can hardly be said to be grossly exploited when you can buy a small British chicken in Aldi for £1.87 and a medium bird for £3. The president of the British ...”

“... Financial Times he called the number of Old Etonians at Number 10 ‘preposterous’, following Jo Johnson’s promotion to head of the Policy Unit. Always in the background lurked Gove’s friend and adviser Cummings, whom Cameron suspected of whispering poison into his master’s ear. Things finally came to a head in 2016, when Gove went to see Cameron and ...”

“... bursting into tears and clutching his baby and generally behaving in a strange way’. Finally, David Ormsby-Gore, Britain’s Ambassador in Washington, rang Macmillan and told him that Hogg’s succession ‘would be a tremendous blow to Anglo-American relations and would in fact end the special relationship’ – so appalled had Kennedy been by what ...”

“... during the Cuban crisis Macmillan kept sending telegrams to Washington which his own Ambassador, David Ormsby-Gore, tore up, describing them as ‘practically incomprehensible’ and ‘wholly out of order’. Cradock doesn’t see Cuba as a Kennedy triumph – JFK used brother Bobby’s backchannel route to the Soviet Ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, to ...”

“... lunar nowherelands. In 1681 Charles Cotton dismissed them as ‘Nature’s pudenda’; in 1775 Dr Johnson was ‘astonished and repelled’ by their ‘wide extent of hopeless sterility’ (though he at least had the hardihood to go and see them for himself); in 1826 Noel Thomas Carrington accused them of ‘shaming the map of England’ with their ...”

“... music was a long-cherished ambition of Giuseppi Baretti, the Italian writer and friend of Samuel Johnson, who had lived in London since 1751. After much thought, Baretti commissioned the music from François-André Danican Philidor, the French operatic composer (celebrated also for his prowess at chess). Philidor worked in Paris on what was to be his major ...”