“... cause.’ The SNP gloried, then as now, in the possibility of a Scotland out of step with English opinion; the substantive issues were matters of relative indifference. Theresa May’s political ally, Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, maintained a consistently negative policy towards European integration between the two ...”

“... Fisher, who give the lie to that. Home is no longer ‘so sad’. At home few people speak Proper English all the time. Home-based poetry may be in dialect, which is present in nearly all the writers considered here: but it may also fuel itself with a hyper-articulate, decorous Queen’s English that deliberately celebrates ...”

“... English-language philosophy of science is still dominated by ideas brought to it by refugees. In the first wave, England got the Austrians, including Karl Popper and Otto Neurath (not to mention Wittgenstein), and later got Paul Feyerabend from Vienna and Imre Lakatos from Budapest. The United States got the Germans, including Rudolf Carnap and Hans Reichenbach ...”

“... literature is now felt to be under threat. His bland intention is ‘to set forth the outlines of English history so that they may serve as background for the study of English literature’. He denies that the task is impossible, though such a work can hardly equip the reader with what he will feel he needs to know about ...”

“... The English are not at their best, although they may well be at their most characteristic, when they go on a lot about the dear old days at school or the ’varsity. Not even the inspired Cyril Connolly could get his tongue far enough into his cheek to be anything more tolerable than stomach-turning about Eton. George Orwell, who had been there too but thought it was possible to have a life afterwards, was surely right to tell him to come off it ...”

“... than the old vernacular, much of the traditional Scottish poetic inheritance was pushed aside. English English came naturally to Boswell, less naturally but effectively in the sentences of Adam Smith and David Hume, but at the cost of the reservation of the Scottish tongue for casual, domestic or low-life use. Yet, as Daiches reminds us, with an ...”

“... who started moving in their own directions after the Sex Pistols showed the way. Debbie Juvenile, Richard Hell, Howard Devoto, Poly Styrene, Stiv Bator, Lucy Toothpaste, Mark P, Joe Strummer, Steve Severin, Siouxsie Sioux, Tom Verlaine, Jordan, Sue Catwoman, Berlin: names to conjure with. And names which hang round the neck of stories less mythical perhaps ...”

“... and also the blandest of experts at suggesting but never revealing his own private life, the English writer Edmund Gosse enthused on the resemblance of the aged Walt Whitman to ‘a great old Angora Tom’. The marvellous old poet, with his soft white hair and snowy silken ruff of beard, would have been delighted by the compliment. Philip Callow’s book ...”

“... letters in which he rehearses his political uncertainties and his bungled love affair with another English tourist, Mary Trevellyn, whom he chases in vain across Europe. Claude’s own name, as Adam Phillips has observed, suggests ‘someone being got at’, and early on he rejoices thatIt is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, ofAll one’s ...”

“... and a new lifestyle to go with it. In Martin’s case, however, this was less Mughal prince than English landed gentleman. He owned estates which stretched across north-eastern India, from Lucknow to Cawnpore, Benares, Chandernagore and Calcutta. And he built himself a sprawling mansion, hopefully named Constantia, on the outskirts of Lucknow, which Jasanoff ...”

“... in wars; the country diaries of curates and Edwardian ladies; prisoners of conscience; Anaïs Nin; Richard Crossman; Tony Benn; Alan Bennett. But on the whole, no. And yet we can’t stop ourselves. These days, if you’re a young writer and you don’t do your own weblog you’re something of an exception, and even for the amateur, the ...”

“... is very different today from what it must have been at the time. In New Bearings in English Poetry, Leavis dismissed Cunard’s Parallax, published in 1925 by Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, as ‘simple imitation’ of The Waste Land. This seems wrong as well as unjust. Since Leavis could be wrong and just, and also right and unjust, it is a ...”

“... form around an essential formlessness. Laura Willowes and Timothy Fortune – ‘mute, middle-aged English failures’ – represent, as Harman notes, ‘the most unpromising material’. Where there is no promise to speak of, character can only ever form by acquiescence. Laura Willowes and Timothy Fortune are memorable because they acquiesce with such passion ...”

“... security. He’s the only one you can put your complete trust in’: thus Lyndon Johnson to Richard Nixon, 1968. It is not often that a book casts fresh light on American history throughout this century, but this biography of Edgar Hoover does just that. Not only was Hoover, as head of the FBI, America’s leading policeman: he enjoyed an extraordinary ...”

“... notable athlete, who had returned to Eton as an assistant-master. Hart-Davis was up to him for ‘English Extra Studies’, and they had remained friends. Lyttelton’s reputation for teaching English in an inspiring manner is in some degree supported by the subsequent careers of pupils, who included Aldous ...”