“... where the dons dined and, hearing those harsh, quacking tones without knowing whose they were, I said to my neighbour that it sounded like the voice of the devil. Someone better informed put me right. It was Auden, at that time still with blondish hair and the face yet to go under the harrow.I don’t think I’d read much of his poetry or would have ...”

“... detected through the thicket of names. ‘A wonderful, dainty, very loving little novelist’, he said of his friend Christopher Isherwood. As with many of those who are dependent for their status on the high status of others – none more than Spender, who thought ‘continually of those who were truly great’ – there appeared to be a measure of disdain ...”

“... sisters. In the event, baby Dora died only months after her fictional namesake. The last boy was Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, named after the aristocrat and hugely popular novelist, who, needless to say, was a friend of Dickens and published in Household Words. With the one exception of Dora, then (a tribute to his own genius perhaps, since he felt that ...”

“... affair, one of the sleaziest episodes of post-war politics: not because of anything Mr Profumo said or did, but because of what the Labour Party said and did. Labour maintained that it was not concerned with morals – oh no, of course not – but solely with Britain’s security. Because Ivanov, an attaché at the ...”

“... is even more at odds with anything that emerges from Dr Li’s interviews, and it must be said that the latter offer a considerable invitation to the 20 paedophiles to ‘validate’ their activity in a bad sense. Dr Li has adopted a trendy, ‘hermeneutic’ approach to his theme whereby sex sounds very much like the pursuit of a piece of academic ...”

“... the “British” who are to blame.’ As regards Browning, this is the exact obverse of what is said. As regards football, I can’t imagine where Lucas has been living. The English/British distinction has been drawn much too firmly by FIFA in recent years for it to have escaped anyone who follows football. And what does he mean by calling Culloden a ...”

“... entirely of British subjects. Even Weale admits that none of the British subjects involved can be said to have made a significant contribution to the German war effort. Technical problems meant that the average radio listener had difficulty in receiving the German propaganda broadcasts, and although the British Free Corps reached its peak strength early in ...”

“... of their genius, as the non-combatants Picasso or T.S. Eliot were to do. In a very different way Edward Thomas, who found his true voice in the war but independently of the fighting, would probably have kept it, and been a real presence in post-poetry: yet speculation has an element of post hoc propter hoc. More typical is the way in which each country is ...”

“... sold 300,000 copies, under the name of ‘Ginx’s Baby’, the title of a contemporary novel by Edward Jenkins MP, a passionate satire about welfare reform – using ‘reform’ in the obsolete sense of ‘improvement’. Ekman’s personal testament forms the afterword. His journey from Young-Turk Skinnerist to mature Darwinian is instructive. His ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... knowing nothing about Kidd: buccaneers were not expected to produce credentials. In fact, Kidd is said to have been a minister’s son from Greenock in Scotland, but when he went to sea or how he learnt his calling does not appear. He learnt it fairly well, and the Blessed William served with some distinction against the French, sacking the island of Marie ...”

“... and that ‘learning destroyed femininity.’ As a result, some of the more intelligent are said to have bribed their brothers by performing various small services in exchange for the loan of school books. In a minority of homes, Dyhouse admits, different standards prevailed, but not necessarily with happier results, as I can testify. Both my parents ...”

“... photographs, objects and clothing relating to pregnancy from the 15th century to the present, Edward Burne-Jones’s Annunciation (1876-79) shows the Virgin receiving news of her pregnancy from the Angel Gabriel. This (the First Joyful Mystery) preoccupied me from the age of nine or ten. I may not have got my period, I may have been years from letting any ...”

“... it is shift for yourself.’ Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the myopic boy who grew up during that trip, said of Scott that he never met a man who cried so easily; later, in The Worst Journey in the World, he wrote, with stunning clarity: ‘I now see very plainly that though we achieved a first-rate tragedy, which will never be forgotten just because it was a ...”

“... throughout the book she offers a gentle but insistent qualification of the view associated with Edward Said’s Orientalism, that the fantasies of the West about the East can be reduced to the use of knowledge as power. Warner’s purpose is to engage more seriously than Said with the work of enchantment that is ...”