“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Do you speak Whiggish? The most recent edition of the Oxford English Dictionary does not, it appears – at least not fluently. The original OED, compiled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, contained full entries for ‘Whig’ and its adjectival derivatives, denoting that group or tradition which had been one of the two main contending forces in British political life from the late 17th to at least the mid 19th century ...”

“... strict about only talking French to each other, believing that if they were caught chatting in English they would be sent home, but lax about other things. The comtesse didn’t enforce the 12.15 a.m. curfew or stop Bouvier from having male visitors (other families wouldn’t let a suitor through the door), and there was freedom in being reachable only by ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... London booksellers who, sometimes in collaboration, were publishing most of the best writers in English, from poets to physicians. By the 1790s, he was one of six London booksellers each of whom was publishing, either at his sole risk or as a member of an ad hoc syndicate or ‘conger’, an average of more than a hundred titles a year, whether new works or ...”

“... own surviving letters. Sterne was hardly the first vain author, but he was perhaps the first major English writer who declined to play the old games of gentlemanly reticence or high-minded modesty. At last, we see an author who does not pretend to be above the market, who unreservedly enjoys popularity. At last, someone who does not regret that all sorts of ...”

“... the cable was a joke of some sort. It might just as well have been an invitation from Cosima and Richard Wagner to come to Bayreuth, or from T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf to spend an afternoon at the offices of the Dial. It took me about two days to ascertain from various friends in New York and Paris that it was indeed genuine, and far less time than that ...”

“... in this period, in part because of acquisitions made during trade missions by the Dutch and English East India Companies, the English Levant Company and the Chamber of Commerce of Marseille, but also because of the active involvement of powerful individuals. Louis XIV’s famous minister of finances, Jean-Baptiste ...”