“... their past. Allison points to the environmental planning which has restricted development and, in Peter Hall’s phrase, ‘contained urban England’. Such restriction is in one sense costly – the price of land and population density have been raised – but it was a price well worth paying for the protection of a countryside unsurpassed in the ...”

“... of a century, a decent send-off. It’s a great turn-out for a notorious homosexual predator who Peter Tatchell, somehow, never got around to outing. George Cornell’s efforts in this direction (both sexist and weightist) having murderously backfired: ‘fat poof’ was an ad lib that was exposed in a dramatically public act of political correction. But say ...”

“... of cultural epistemology, a skeleton key to a lock we’ve yet to find?’ Well, I look forward to reading that book. Marcus hasn’t written it. Instead, a lot of uncollected reviews and jottings up to thirteen years old have found a retirement home, on the cart-before-the-horse principle that Elvis’s ubiquitous presence in popular culture means you can ...”

“... architect. That they should do so is shocking: the process by which they did so is essential reading for anyone interested in the operations of power in this country. The heart of the book concerns the action, or inaction, of professional and public bodies when confronted with established facts relating to the conduct of their members, and it exposes the ...”

“... out from the Sun to mark the limits between which it might be worth looking for life. After reading Evolving the Alien this feels conservative, as well it might when one sees Goodwin and Gribbin’s diagram showing the life zone here on Earth stretching just 25 km from below the seabed to the stratosphere. I don’t understand this. In the last decade ...”

“... Became Shakespeare.2 As such it undeniably knocks Greenblatt’s effort, not to mention Peter Ackroyd’s generalising and overlong Shakespeare: The Biography,3 into a cocked jester’s cap. The ploy of concentrating on the events of a single exciting year neatly leaves out much of what can make the average cradle-to-grave life of Shakespeare seem ...”

“... to finish. ‘Why have so many of Britain’s great cities fared so badly in the 20th century?’ Peter Clark, the general editor of the series, asks in his preface. Turn the page, and Martin Daunton’s introduction descends with unconcealed relish into the ‘decay, corruption, stench and stickiness’ of the early Victorian city – a hell from which the ...”

“... Reading this Life of Lloyd George is like watching one of those old James Cagney movies where it’s established early on that the protagonist isn’t simply an anti-hero but, for all that he’s lionised, an irredeemable villain. The fun comes from watching him get away with all sorts of caddishness early on and then carry on the virtuoso act long after everyone has got his number ...”

“... and her uncle Ronald excelled, and which Punch, at its best, epitomised. In 1967 Fitzgerald was ‘reading Diary of a Nobody for the 20th time’, and Mr Pooter was undoubtedly an influence on one of the best comic creations of the letters, ‘Daddy’, the version of her husband, Desmond Fitzgerald, who features in correspondence with their two ...”

“... involved, among other things, a little larceny and a little prostitution, and hanging out with Peter Rachman in London. The narrator also knows Rachman, and indeed visits a number of his properties with him. We see a memorable series of snapshots of broken-down flats and houses, the battered London equivalent of the shabby Paris immeubles Modiano so ...”

“... the last 120 years. They are based on intensive original research, are easy to read and well worth reading. Wherever he ranks as a philosopher, Green is a first-rate historian. But his essays do not, I think, confirm his claim that all through the 20th century before 1975 the Conservative Party was ‘steeped in ideological dispute’. They show, rather, that ...”

“... from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader, and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames.’ This is Gibbon’s description of the murder of the mathematician and ...”

“... local vicar must have been as entertaining as it was scandalous and shocking. Thirty years later, Peter Vavasour from Yorkshire was prosecuted by the High Commission for similarly provocative words about the Christian doctrine of life after death. ‘Tush tush,’ he declared. ‘That is but a tricke of the clergye, to cause the people to beleeve … to gett ...”

“... venture to think that [Fitzjames] had few equals in good downright sledgehammer controversy.’ Reading through this selection of his articles enforces the unsurprising conclusion that vigorous use of the tomahawk and the sledgehammer doesn’t make for the subtlest literary criticism. Fitzjames had, it’s true, an undeniable facility for hitting the nail ...”

“... and tells us a lot about why he interprets Mozart’s life in the way that he does. Solomon’s reading of Mozart’s music is governed by a single idea: the subversion of paradise by reality and death – et in arcadia ego. In his early output, Mozart explores the possibilities of the serenade, a genre whose ‘predominant character is ...”