“... all English experience in this century’. ‘Any understanding of the immediate past,’ he said, ‘must be incomplete unless this huge deprivation of the quiet pleasures of the eye is accepted as a dominant condition, sometimes making for impotent resentment, sometimes for mere sentimental apathy, sometimes poisoning love of country and of ...”

“... and there was some beautiful embroidery framed on screens. At first sight you would have said that it was a woman’s room. But it wasn’t. I soon saw the difference. There had never been a woman’s hand in that place. It was the room of a man who had a passion for frippery, who had a perverted taste for soft delicate things. It was the ...”

“... Edward Jones – the Burne came later – was born in Birmingham to a mother who died giving birth to him and a father who eked out a living as a frame-maker, although art, his son reported, ‘was always a great bewilderment to him’. The only person who seems to have recognised the boy’s talent – a neighbour who bought pictures to rework – had the dubious merit of having once painted stormy waves over a calm harbour scene by Turner ...”

“... of papier-mâché. Bradlaugh had called her Hypatia after the fourth-century bluestocking who was said to have been the last librarian of Alexandria and who was martyred by a fanatical Christian sect, her body mutilated with pottery shards. He was never less than consistent. To later generations, though, Bradlaugh’s impact has faded. His long struggle to be ...”

“... And all in sport to jeer at me. First, Beauty crept into a rose, Which when I plucked not, Sir, said she, Tell me, I pray, Whose hands are those? But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me. Then Money came, and chinking still, What tune is this, poor man? said he: I heard in Music you had skill. But thou shalt ...”

“... Wells in A Modern Utopia in 1905, neatly envisioning the micro-computer. And there is a lot to be said for the micro-computer. But such ‘glow’ as it possesses is purely literal and mechanical. Indeed, already in Wells’s sentence, any more metaphorical glow pertains to the future and to ‘further speculation’. In the same Modern Utopia there are ...”

“... the equally great Count Fosco in the book but also such men of the readership as Swinburne and Edward Fitzgerald, who named his new boat after her. It was difficult for the Rhoda Nunns of fiction to follow her. But Marian Halcombe had no need to work. Though not rich herself, she was half-sister to an heiress. Rhoda Nunn has to work, and this gives ...”

“... some say they were ejaculated on or sprayed with urine. At least 247 identified individuals are said by the complainants’ lawyers to have been killed during poorly recorded encounters with British patrols and prison guards. That figure excludes the subjects of another investigation that convened in March to look into claims that more than twenty Iraqis ...”

“... the referendum was ‘Take Back Control.’ But of what and from whom? The establishment Leavers said: ‘Take back the sovereignty of Parliament, the Ark of the English Covenant. England isn’t England if Parliament can be overruled by anyone – least of all by foreigners.’ But the mass of more plebeian Leavers asked something different: why should they ...”

“... chapter is a footnoted celebrity profile written by a journalist in prison for sexually assaulting said celebrity; another is a series of PowerPoint slides created by a 12-year-old about music (they’re about pauses in great rock’n’roll songs) and her family. The novel, which won a Pulitzer, secured Egan’s reputation as an astute analyst of the ...”

“... would be theoretical and polite, so long as the sweet, silly and allegedly dark stuff played. Some said these were films noirs, but screwball comedy was closer to the mark. Mann is perceptive, careful and experienced in writing about the film business (he has produced good books on Katharine Hepburn and Marlon Brando in the past). He does his best to like ...”

“... structured and moral environment’ – a proposition to which he agrees enthusiastically: ‘I said, “I think it solves everything.”’ Ludo’s voice has already asserted itself, first as petulant interruptions, then as entries in a journal. It will soon take over the narrative.Having found out shortly after his eleventh birthday who his biological ...”

“... scene of the killing to be found guilty and sent to jail,’ Detective Inspector John McFarlane said after the conviction of 17 of the 20 young people jointly charged with the murder of 15-year-old Sofyen Belamouadden at Victoria Station in March 2010: ‘the law on joint enterprise is clear and unforgiving.’ To be found guilty of murder as an individual ...”

“... basis of evangelical humanism, in which – to use his formulation – everything well and piously said or done, even by pagans, is referred to Christ, everything, in other words, is judged first by the standard of ancient wisdom and eloquence, and then by the Christian. To this time belong The Institution of Christian Marriage for Katherine of Aragon, On ...”

“... of quarts of blackberries in his arms, picked with the morning dew, five hundred miles away.’ Edward Dorn.) Even Ben Watson, whose poodle parlour is wall to wall with off-piste names, admits (in conversation) that he has never been introduced to Woolf’s work: ‘My book’s sub-plot is Philip K. Dick, sales-talk, Hollywood and schitzophrenia.’ So ...”