“... in writing plays again. Maybe it’ll be the start of a new romance. Dusk falls. Attercliffe goes home to his ‘four-bedroomed, one bathroomed, one living-roomed (dining-annexed), one-kitchened “executive” dwelling’ at 24 Walton Lane on the outskirts of Morristown. Through the window he sees Elise his eldest daughter washing her hair in the kitchen ...”

“... applause at the bill’s passing, she hurried off to break the news to Fawcett, who was waiting at home by the fire in her dressing gown, and in her elation, drove her car straight into a police officer. Ray Strachey (in the driver’s seat) with Millicent Garrett Fawcett, her daughter Philippa and sister Agnes on 2 July 1928. The Cause, though not a ...”

“... gondolier. With Hartleian cunning she dissembles this passion, writing to her close friend back home that she has met a lady called Simonetta Perkins who is in the same predicament, and what advice should she be given? The comedy is delicate and poignant too, with an anti-climactic climax of droll simplicity. Minor characters are masterfully etched, in ...”

“... to be thinking of literary critics, not grapepickers or hairdressers. The good news is that the Home Counties view of literature has now been decisively despatched. The native of the Southern hemisphere no longer appears in Anglo-Saxon culture only through the sights of a rifle or at the end of a sherry decanter. E.M. Forster had it both ways, allowing his ...”

“... Gass pointed out in 1986 when this book was published to rapturous reviews in the United States, Home contains an assault on the ‘modern’ that conforms to type. It appeals to ‘us’, the long-suffering public, and it points the finger at ‘they’ who have deprived us of everything we love best. ‘They’ have taken the ‘tunes’ from our ...”

“... Maxwell-Fyfe, who led the negotiations that led to the European Convention (and went on to be home secretary in the 1951 Conservative government) welcomed the Convention as ‘a simple and safe insurance policy’ in favour of ‘a minimum standard of democratic conduct’, a text that set out ‘a system of collective security against tyranny and ...”

“... sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.’ France’s English contemporary Lord Justice Mathew made the point in more genteel terms: ‘In England,’ he said, ‘justice is open to all, like the Ritz.’ The Early Victorian poet Thomas Love Peacock had noted the unequal impact of the Sunday observance laws: The poor man’s sins are ...”

“... She was related by marriage to some of Britain’s most influential families, including the (Lord John) Russells and the Trevelyans; her father, Sir Hugh Bell, was also a Liberal MP. She took a brilliant First in history after only five terms at Oxford, despite enjoying an active social life. Her interest in the East began at 25, when she spent six ...”

“... no trouble in concurring with those who found her, in all her immensities, vulgar – among them, Lord Carrington. ‘Jonathan Miller talks of her “catering to the worst elements of commuter idiocy”,’ Johnson continues, ‘and one can see what he means.’ Far be it from me to differ from my brother-in-law, but I can’t share in the choice of ...”

“... have made him what he is (anyone can do it); that he and his family live in Rupert Brooke’s home, the Old Vicarage, Grantchester. He has also, we are vaguely aware, some kind of yeoman, military ancestry (the archers at Crécy?). He purveys a kind of Englishness that protests too much, as though it had been devised by a Germany spy while his parachute ...”

“... The farm never made any money, and the Selwyns were overdrawn at the bank. In 1929 Helen went ‘home’, and Liz was born in October. (Her sister Barbara, then aged eight, was at an English convent school.) When Geoffrey joined them a month or two later it was clear that something had to change. He looked for a position of some kind but without success. A ...”

“... done. Jo recovered bit by bit. Then, at last, test results came through: HIV negative, praise the Lord. With many misgivings she returned to school. A few days later I looked at my phone bill and realised something was wrong. It was enormously high and I didn’t recognise some of the numbers at all. I left the printout in the kitchen and next morning ...”

“... Queries wondered if it was a dialect term. In Staffordshire, he explained, ‘if a person leaves home … on the Saturday afternoon to spend the evening of Saturday and the following Sunday with friends … he is said to be spending his week-end at So-and-so. I am informed that this name for Saturday and the day which comes between a Saturday and Monday is ...”

“... mountain and the gantries’, in 1907. The next year his father, a Church of Ireland minister and Home Ruler who refused to sign the Ulster Covenant, was given the parish of St Nicholas in Carrickfergus, where he stayed until 1931, when he was made bishop of Cashel and Waterford. The MacNeices’ relocation north had not been through choice: Louis’s ...”

“... had the means to lead a very agreeable life, his hard reading interrupted at will by cricket at Lord’s, boating and climbing. When he married, his father increased his allowance, and did so again as each child was born, for he assumed that his son could not do his proper work in the world if he had to earn his own living. He gave Frederic the best ...”