“... for life among the haute bourgeoisie in prewar Germany and Swiss sanatoria, and Robert Musil’s Young Törless for possible events during Brandt’s schooldays. Where there is no proof, there is supposition. For example: ‘There is ample evidence that Brandt suffered a psychic wound in his school days, something so hurtful that it affected every area of ...”

“... trying to meet Germany half-way towards its legitimate aspirations. Both the middle-aged and the young between the two wars had been pulled emotionally towards Germany. The veterans had formed lively ‘no more war’ associations with their old opponents in the Kaiser’s army; the unsophisticated young enjoyed Bavarian ...”

“... a passing fashion, a too-easily domesticated bag of tricks, and an inexplicable temptation for the young. 7. Contemporary criticism is mainly a product of universities at the metropolitan centres of empire in Europe and the United States. It is the dominant form of ‘advanced’ literary culture at the centre of empire. By contrast, literary culture at the ...”

“... when I asked him which of the other artforms novel-writing was most like.) Lennon captures the young Mailer drinking gin to be more like Hemingway. He sees him smarting at his father’s addiction to gambling and shadow-boxing around Brooklyn impersonating Rocky Graziano. He doesn’t quite explain Mailer’s pugilistic kind of heroism, but he portrays ...”

“... to Blackpool to play poker. You wouldn’t have got me there for any other reason. When I was young, my family used to take day trips to Lancashire’s beach resorts. Each of them – Fleetwood, Cleveleys, Lytham and Morecambe – was desolate in its own way, but none provoked so many tears as Blackpool, all that giddy anticipation disappointed by damp ...”

“... Suez had nearly wrecked, being no less successful in establishing close collaboration with the young President Kennedy than with his old wartime friend Eisenhower. He was slower to see his way in Europe. Britain fiddled around with the European Free Trade Area – something to which, despite all the evidence to the contrary, some Conservatives still think ...”

“... figure since Layamon’s. What a fate for the hammer of the Saxons, the great obverse of Edward I! All these arguments create in the end a strange, mixed, twiddle-the-tuning-knob kind of effect. I feel sure Lucas is wrong in general, and wrong just because of that culturally-biased, bend-over-backwards, self-exculpating mode so characteristic of the ...”

“... tree, “dazzled and swept up” by these powerful tales, which made a permanent impression on the young boy.’ This account (as given by Steinbeck in later life) directly echoes Walter Scott’s reminiscence in his autobiography of how his bookish Aunt Jenny gave him a copy of Percy’s Reliques: ‘I remember well the spot where I read these volumes for the ...”

“... less likely to evoke a major response from law-enforcement agencies. Their perpetrators tend to be young, male and (more contentiously) from working-class backgrounds. It may be appropriate here to invoke the concept of a ‘surrogate racial attack’: the anonymous bogus tip-off to a social services department or an environmental health officer about ...”

“... two hundred and fifty men led by a clutch of ‘spies, scholars, soldiers, sailors and well-born young blades’. After flattening the Trinidad settlement, where Berrio was preparing to re-enter Guiana, he rescued five local chieftains ‘almost dead from famine, and wasted with torments’ and broadcast to an admiring population the discourse which was to ...”

“... of parties!’) We are confronted, here, with the worst and not the least bright of the ‘Bright Young Things’: with a vile mind and a gorgeous carapace, and with a maddening class confidence allied to a tiny, repetitive tic of fanaticism. It’s easy to see how Diana Mitford/Guinness/Mosley attracted the obvious clichés about ‘The Huntress’ and ...”

“... a very difficult because compacted poem, evidently arose from a terrible accident to a young man. And an extraordinary poem, ‘Wanting to live in Harlem’, from Final Solutions, makes irrefutable connections between a boy growing up in St Louis, dreams of a fair black woman, two boys in Harlem, and an account – taken from the Cambridge Ancient ...”

“... haunted by the knowledge that his methods as thinker and prophet as much resembled those of Uncle Edward Ponderevo, promoter of the world-famous patent medicine Tono-Bungay, as they did those of Plato and Marx. For one thing, did he not, just like Uncle Ponderevo, construct his campaigns around slogans? And do not the slogans – ‘the competent ...”

“... it was merely an appendix to the country, the future was in the hands of the thousands of bright young men and women my colleagues and I would train. We would win, without the sherry or the Trinity Ball or the Elizabethan Society. McDowell and Webb think well of Trinity, and why not? They are so closely identified with the College that to think well of it ...”

“... showcase there is a mahogany cigar-box bearing the simple inscription “The Fort”. This was Edward III’s personal humidor.’ And the visit ends: ‘I said good-bye to the shop but it didn’t answer back. Shops never do. Old man Proudhon was right: property is deaf.’ Cigar-smoking is also described as quite a simple business. You make some sort of ...”