“... Nash’s Regent Street, and one ruined pointed arch than all Wren’s churches put together.’ Little has changed. Antiquarian prejudice and ecclesiastical philistinism are in good shape, self-righteous as ever.Gavin Stamp was not of the flock. He was a propagandist, a preservationist, a stern critic and fierce journalist. He was a great historian ...”

“... rural life, moved to Toulouse, where he managed to eke out a living teaching and perhaps playing a little: he was hiding from the Gestapo in plain sight. In April 1944 he was caught in a round-up on the streets of Toulouse and taken to Drancy, the collection point for Jews awaiting murder. He managed to write a note to his brother-in-law, Jan Weevers, and ...”

“... We’re confident it’s real’: Arthur Aron is a psychologist who has discovered that blood-flows in the brains of people claiming to be in love after decades of marriage resemble those of new lovers. Romance may authentically survive: ‘That’s what the brain scans are telling us. People can’t fake that ...”

“... Plan did the opposite. Steil’s hero on the domestic front is another relatively unknown figure, Arthur Vandenberg, Republican senator for Michigan. Vandenberg understood that in order to get Congress to agree funding, and the US public to countenance troops remaining in Europe, another red scare would be needed. Vandenberg advised Truman to ‘scare the ...”

“... vanguard of the ascending bourgeoisie, becomes the lumpen-bourgeoisie in the age of its decay,’ Arthur Koestler wrote. Nowhere in Anglo-America is this phenomenon more evident than in the British media, which even at its most reactionary used to maintain some commitment to wit and style. The Spectator, once suavely edited, now serves as a fraternity house ...”

“... the Branghtons’ tenant Mr Smith, who speaks of himself as ‘a man who wishes to have things a little genteel’. Johnson was delighted by this ‘Holbourn Beau’: ‘such a fine varnish of low politeness! – such a struggle to appear a Gentleman!’ Mrs Thrale claimed to recognise just the type from her visits to one of London’s many new places of ...”

“... vote of support from his six-thousand-strong congregation. A debate began about the Jews. Arthur Griffith, who was to found Sinn Fein two years later, supported the boycott in his newspaper, the United Irishman. ‘No thoughtful Irishman or woman can view without apprehension the continued influx of Jews into Ireland and the continuous efflux of the ...”

“... revolution was that of February 1917, and that the October power seizure by the Bolsheviks was little more than an opportunistic coup d’état. History has also taken an increasingly nasty view of Lenin. For so many decades, oppositional Communists and post-Stalinist leaders of the Soviet Union would condemn abuses of power by describing them as ...”

“... larger than a battalion, did not attend staff college and learn to plan operations, and showed little interest in logistics. Many of the battles he fought with his own commanders during World War Two revolved around these gaps in his military experience: at root he remained a subaltern, lecturing generals. Subaltern studies have their place, however, and ...”

“... she smiled sweetly and said, ‘Oh, you’ve scooted across the park from the West Side in your little brown suit and your big brown shoes.’ To which the Brooklyn boy still alive in me replied: ‘Fuck you, Jackie’ ... And so we became even faster friends than we already were. Who would expect anything different? There is something very revealing about ...”

“... and a huge jowl shaded to look excessively meaty and anything but skull-like. But the face gives little away. His expression is that of a man who is as mildly vain as we all are when our picture is taken. Mostly, however, he has the air of a man who is concentrating hard on sitting still, which is as much as you can say of most portraits before the invention ...”

“... and tells us how to act; the rest is totalitarianism. It seemed at the time both lofty and a little vague and Sartre didn’t buy it, but he was duty-bound to review the book. After much hesitation he assigned it to Francis Jeanson, ex-Alger républicain (and later a clandestine courier in France for the FLN). Jeanson took Camus apart. He saw his ...”

“... film itself. It was being screened by Channel 4, a station known then for its obscurity (it was so little-watched that a common joke went: ‘Where do married couples go when they want to elope?’ ‘Channel 4’) and its liberal attitude towards the depiction of sex and nudity. The opening scenes, which featured rundown London squats and tenement ...”

“... Council sends to Biennales, what’s shortlisted for the Turner Prize, no ‘conspiracy’ in little magazines and private galleries would matter. The Saatchi Gallery, just because it seems so influential in these areas, has acquired a quasi-public status. True, the ‘contemporary art’ camp can be extremely touchy too. There was outrage in 1991, when a ...”

“... The publication of the ODNB has been the occasion for many ‘big compliments’ and rather little nagging. Well-meaning colleagues have rushed to provide me with examples of errors, but since every visit to shelf or screen has left me in a state of head-shaking amazement at the quantity of exact information packed into its pages, I feel no inclination ...”