“... fifty years put together. The exception that proves the rule is Dickens, who became so famous so young that people carefully preserved the wonder-boy’s missives: as a result, the majestic Pilgrim Edition, in progress now for nearly a quarter of a century, is only half-way through his creative life. The letters of a writer like Hardy or Johnson, in which ...”

“... dealing with production and supply. Dalton himself, with an eye to party politics, recruited able young socialists like Hugh Gaitskell and Douglas Jay. The diaries reveal the many points of conflict between the career Civil Service and the outsiders. There were quarrels about honours: were the temporaries entitled to them? And there were differences over ...”

“... not to be confused with a novel of the same title by Anita Brookner). In the earlier book Michael Cullen left working-class Nottingham for the metropolis, fell into the proverbial bad company, and ended up as a convicted gold-smuggler. Now, having been abandoned by his wife after ten years of idleness in the Cambridgeshire village of Upper Mayhem, he ...”

“... on his intuition. In the Memoirs he tells us how an uncle in banking, having listened to the young Aron’s dissertation on the currency crisis, finally said to him: ‘Je t’écouterai quand tu parleras de philosophie; sur les finances, tu ne sais rien, tais-toi.’ He did not take the advice. He wrote, and spoke, extensively about economic ...”

“... terms. After the death of his friend Hendrik Andersen’s brother in 1902, James wrote to the young sculptor: ‘The sense that I can’t help you, see you, talk to you, touch you, hold you close & long, or do anything to make you rest on me, & feel my deep participation – this torments me, dearest boy, & makes me ache for you, & for myself.’ There ...”

“... of the judges of the Victorian Premier’s Prize for First Fiction, of not giving the award to a young writer who has perpetrated one of the greatest frauds in Australia’s rich history of literary hoaxes and deceptions. Before she was exposed, Helen Demidenko, as she styled herself (Helen Darville as she in fact is), might have seemed to be one of the ...”

“... of Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee describes Lehmann as one of the ‘ambitious, thwarted, talented young men’ who ‘rubbed up against Leonard’s adamantine proprietariness and perfectionism ... It was a well-known joke among their friends that working at the Hogarth Press drove you mad.’ After seven months at the Press Lehmann made his first appearance ...”

“... daughter. Lane sent his ‘emissaries’ with an ‘ultimatum’ that Morpurgo should allow the young couple an equivalent sum to what he, as a millionaire, could afford. Morpurgo, who was no millionaire, took offence. The in-laws never exchanged so much as another word for the rest of Lane’s life. At its best, when it is dealing with Lane’s ...”

“... Cameron called on institutions to devise their own ‘sensible rules’ about face veils, and Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, promised that schools would take a firm lead. He declared that ‘our liberal West values’ must be protected and added that ‘the Muslim community needs to listen’ because British society has come a long way ‘to ensure ...”

“... be guessed from his thoughts about how to cure one current social ill: the unwillingness of many young men to provide for the babies they beget. He says (plausibly enough) that we should make parents meet their obligations by any means that don’t damage the children. ‘In case of wilful neglect or abandonment by a father of the duties, as of ...”

“... right foot being too near the female alms-giver’s heel – though these are features for which Michael Fried has found an unexpected justification, as being part of a scheme to unsettle the conventional relationship of viewer to canvas. According to Crow, at all events, David’s decision was to ‘go for the bold stroke’ and to push forward regardless ...”

“... paedophile, martyr, traitor, major minor writer. In an Omnibus programme broadcast late last year, Michael Bracewell claimed that he was ‘the century’s first pop celebrity’, and tried to persuade us that, in the manner of an Elvis or a McCartney, Wilde was a working-class lad made good. Cut to a shot of Bracewell looking uncomfortable in a gargoyled ...”

“... sons. The rawest treatment of this theme is in Zipper and His Father (1928), the portrait of a young man, Arnold Zipper, who is spiritually ruined by his service on the front during the First World War, and by his father’s thoughtless support for that war. At the end of the book, a sickly intellectual, Eduard, blames Arnold’s problems on his ...”

“... report’s author, Peter Clarke. Last summer, when he was still secretary of state for education, Michael Gove floated the idea of requiring schools to teach British values. In November, the DfE issued what it called ‘strengthened guidance’ on ‘promoting British values in schools’ – a necessary move, according to Lord Nash, the schools ...”

“... in 1936 – a bad period not only in England but throughout Europe – he left a widow and the young George in somewhat reduced circumstances. The change of name from Behar to Blake was understandable enough. However, there were further complications which did not help the boy, then rising twelve: one of the Behar sisters had married a banker, Henri ...”