“... usually say about life on earth: it certainly seems a bit short on the Pauline virtue of hope, say.Nancy Mitford remembered reproaching Waugh for behaving with quite unprompted unkindness to a young admirer at dinner: ‘You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic,’ he replied. ‘Without supernatural aid I would hardly be ...”

“... and apologise to those he’d forgotten to acknowledge. They include Jared Kushner’s father, Charles, now Trump’s ambassador to France. In one hasty passage, Sarkozy remembers to doff his cap to Kushner Sr after politely declining his offer of a visit in prison, which Sarkozy’s lawyers believed might compromise his appeal. They had a point: Kushner ...”

“... other things he mentions not feeling he belongs to ‘the English Literary Happy Family’, as I hope neither do I.21 March. Reading a book about William Morris and Kelmscott, I come across a reminiscence by Philip Webb, who remarked to W.R. Lethaby: ‘The best of those times was that there was no covetousness; all went into the common stock … and then we ...”

“... than New York, numerically speaking. His list of a score or so in which ‘a worthwhile novel can hope for notice’ has changed slightly since 1978, but most surviving papers on the list have considered Other People in the first three weeks.Twenty-odd reviewing outlets, however, are as nothing to the number of new novels in English that get published in ...”

“... herself: ‘Ireland insists that Yeats be buried here.’ De Valera’s wire to her read: ‘We hope that his body will be laid to rest in his native soil.’ Yeats himself had written to Dorothy Wellesley five months before his death: ‘I write my poems for the Irish people, but I am damned if I will have them at my funeral. A Dublin funeral is something ...”

“... of a writer whose lifelong financial needs and intense desire for fame compelled him to hope for commercial, popular success, even as it simultaneously provoked in him a revulsion against the concessions to stylistic and formal conventions he would be required to make. Thus, in the opening sections of Pierre, as in the opening sections of ...”

“... life as ‘Roberts’ before the trial began, but decided to put him on the stand in the hope that it would remain concealed from the jury.Nor do Taylor’s bigamy and perjury appear to have damaged him much in the eyes of his friends. A hundred years later, and one could easily imagine them leaving him alone in the library with a loaded revolver. As ...”

“... figures deplorable, the relish with which they are pursued in the tabloid press chilling. I hope Mr Langham gets a short sentence and that he will not become the pariah the authorities would like, and that the BBC, not these days noted for its courage, will shortly re-employ him. 11 August. On Saturdays the Guardian is running a series on ...”

“... is there in me which attracts men to me, young and old? I am deeply grateful for the power, and hope I may use it for the good of those who succumb to it.’ A year after Millicent’s birth, Mabel was dealt another blow. David was offered a job teaching astronomy and directing the college observatory at Amherst College, his alma mater. (He had failed a ...”

“... so suave is the rendering of the lives of the three women described here, one is emboldened to hope that even the most obtuse reader might come away from All We Know, if not with some synoptic understanding of the lesbian ‘tribe’ (whatever that might be), then at least with an ability to spot members of that tribe when they are seated around the dinner ...”

“... our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope that our show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.’ This has at least the value of staking a claim to decency in language that is decent; but the hopeful words of the performers of Hamilton and the flailing ...”

“... McKenna in 1957 It was strange being alone with these two books; even the names of the poets – Charles Tomlinson, or David Gascoyne, or Robert Conquest, or John Holloway, or Christopher Middleton, or Geoffrey Hill – stood for a world that was fully England. Looking at the list of poets was like having one’s Irish nose pushed up against the polished ...”

“... heard in the word ‘Norton’ an echo of that job, and even of his family – he was appointed as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry. From childhood onwards, Eliot was fascinated not just by names in general, but by his own. Murder in the Cathedral, the 1935 play which, throughout the period covered by this volume of letters, yields a healthy income ...”

“... the Mail campaign that led to the introduction of Section 28. (Thatcher’s authorised biographer, Charles Moore, suggested that her motive was her hatred of local government education policies, as if a legislative exercise in queer-bashing, which blighted the lives of gay children for a generation, were somehow excusable as a means to a worthy end.) In this ...”

“... second letter in this book is from 1957, when McGahern was working as a teacher in Dublin. ‘I hope to go home about Wednesday,’ he writes to a friend. A footnote explains: ‘Home, at this point, was still the garda barracks in Cootehall, Co. Roscommon,’ where McGahern and his siblings were brought up by their father after their mother died in ...”