“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... no means all boastful or complicit. The supreme text of recent years is James Fox’s account of Lord Lucan and his set, with their boffes de politesse. There is a touch of Lucanian zombiness in The Monument, and the peer himself takes part in The Passion of John Aspinall. Patrician insolence has quite often appeared to express a perception of the activities ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... remain in the ordinary legal system. In the two influential reports that heralded these changes, Lord Briggs suggested that the online court process might have three stages. First, you, the claimant, would fill in a form online. Pre-populated boxes would help you to clarify the nature of the claim. You would select your opponent: your builder, say, or your ...”

“... the Cross or the pyroclastic whisper of Anonymous, Unknown Author. Or something a little closer to home – Jeannie, for instance, the family friend whom my father (a Catholic priest in full cassock) calls simply a Eucharistic mystic, so guilelessly, and with such evident trust, that he does not even realise it rhymes.I picked up Simon Critchley’s On ...”

“... to name it. He merely says demurely that he persuaded Olivier’s friend, their shared publisher Lord Weidenfeld, that – how does he put it? – ‘between them [Olivier’s] two books did not add up to a comprehensive, let alone objective, account of one of the most extraordinary lives, in any profession, of this century.’ Holden has a nice line in dry ...”

“... doing, to other people, to people we knew. Then, in the 1997 general election, after I had left home and gone to university in England, Martin McGuinness became our MP. He never could have been my father, of course. Even the words I use betray my upbringing: Derry or Londonderry? Full disclosure might be proper, though it is unusual in writing about ...”

“... providing, for instance, a definitive list of the pet names used by the family. Nancy was Koko at home, Pauline or Paul to her husband, Susan to her sister Jessica, who was also Susan to her in return. Jessica was always Decca, except when Susan. Deborah was usually Debo, though frequently also Nine (a reference to her supposed mental age) or Tiny Swine ...”