“... boys. There is more to Dumas than Professor Hemmings allows. But there is also the danger that one may read too much into Dumas. Thus we are told of his visit to England in 1857, a stay which was carefully arranged so as not to coincide with an English Sunday (an earlier visit had impressed on him that this was something to be avoided). He visited Madame ...”

“... in a small town than a large one,’ a would-be mentor assured the author, ‘but please God it may light a fire under you.’ If that didn’t, something else ...”

“... of profligate oriental luxury circulating in Western Europe. The palace of the Ibelins in Beirut may have been decorated with mosaic and marble. But such conceits were rare even in the richest cities. In rural areas the land was tilled by the natives, mostly Moslems, with some eastern Christians all on the margins of penury. There was hardly any Latin ...”

“... to not much purpose (‘something very taking about this poetry’), until he bethinks him of what may be called a thermal poetics: ‘seems to me better (than Ted Hughes) – warmer ... ’ Easily placated though he is, Ted Hughes will hardly be pleased to think that grounds for comparison could be found, even from the oblique standpoint of Edinburgh. A more ...”

“... every disadvantage, and in the letters one hears only of the disadvantages and desperation. It may be useful to disentangle from within the letters the positive ideas that lie behind the ranting, and that also lie behind the still vivid fiction of this period, sometimes interrupting and often spoiling the longer fiction, but also constituting part of its ...”

“... proved a highly instrumental and rational political practice. The Leninist conception of the party may mark a gross caricature of Marx’s political vision and by now a sharp distortion even of Lenin’s own views: but it has certainly furnished an extremely helpful ideological and practical formula in the struggle for state power and an even more attractive ...”

“... people to afford measured necessities of food, clothing, shelter? But if we speak only of that, we may neglect a fundamental part of deprivation: the inability to participate fully in society. Should we then be concerned with relative poverty? But if we were wouldn’t we end up with the almost empty proposition that the poor are just those who have less than ...”

“... indeed she suggests that high-risk technology applied to art is an Anglo-Saxon vice. She may be correct that the solvents available to the restorer today are more powerful than those formerly employed, but her claim that the modern methods are generally more drastic than the old ones is highly misleading. This is especially obvious when we consider ...”

“... What will she do when she has lost me? Will she lead a life of ascetic austerity? There may have been wish-fulfilment in the praise for her independence, but he was right about her ascetic austerity. This biographer is incurious about both the costs of her devotion to her father, and the costs the rest of the family must have paid. What about the ...”

“... as a precursor, is said to be meaningless except when in opposition to something else, which may be true but is not very defiant. I notice in passing that the wartime New Apocalypse gets a mention, though none of its poets rates an individual entry unless, like Barker and Watkins, they made it elsewhere on their own. Poetry London, the only magazine to ...”

“... Harold Macmillan elevated Tom Dugdale to the Peerage, he was telling the world that Parliament may have got the right answer, but that in doing justice they had blackened the name of a good man and that that had to be put right. The age of chivalry was not dead. Once again Harold Macmillan had lifted the veil and permitted us to understand why ...”

“... friends. But there is another difference between them apart from writing style – indeed, it may explain the difference in style. When Haines left Downing Street, Harold Wilson offered him a knighthood. Haines refused. Bernard Donoughue is now Lord Donoughue. If blandness is Donoughue’s problem, Callaghan’s is whimsy: The Queen held an evening ...”

“... by accident lit a fire with a five-pound note. She, incidentally, practised a Scottish habit which may well now be extinct: eating porridge not sitting down but on the hoof, wandering about her house with bowl and spoon. These were the years of David’s adolescence. While acknowledging the universal temptation to remember only sunny days, he proclaims his ...”

“... nobody knows anything. Wow. There’s so much big-picture bad economic news at the moment that it may seem hard to get excited about this point – but it is an important one, because it shows just how badly capitalism has been functioning, even on its own ...”

“... avoid noxious winds in the same way as one would avoid an arrow.’ Fruits, meat, fish and fowl may be eaten, but no vegetables. Final Chapter of the Continued Explanations of the True Origin, the Great Cave, and the Highest Direction by Anonymous (14th century) It is noted that there are no previous chapters to which this text corresponds. Five Charms ...”