“... sense that outsiders make unfair claims on places, benefits and opportunities to which they have no birthright, and which should, therefore, be denied them; a belief that the removal of strangers whose appearance and manner mark them out as different would cause no new problems and make the natives happier.‘I think ...”

“... McGreevy wrote, are frequently depicted in the pursuit of pleasure, at the circus or music-hall, at race meetings, or simply in conversation with each other. Yet often the expression on their faces suggests restraint, thoughtfulness, an inner discipline. Outwardly they so obviously belong to a more primitive state of society than has ever been depicted ...”

“... locality; places which survived into the 1960s and were familiar to me, too. The St Margaret’s Hall and the Kinema Ballroom, Dunfermline; the Palais, Cowdenbeath; and the ‘Snake Pit’, Rosyth. That wasn’t the last’s real name, which neither my aunt nor I could remember. It was really no more than a big room above ...”

“... British Isles, Europe, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way. I have always looked to the poet John Hewitt’s manifesto in order to salvage a coherent identity. He wrote: I’m an Ulsterman of planter stock. I was born in the island of Ireland, so secondarily I’m an Irishman. I was born in the British archipelago and English is my native tongue, so I am ...”

“... Boot recoiled from what he called ‘the right’ towards what was becoming the centre. Boot could no longer serve up undiluted adulation, as he might have done in his salad days as a young Russian émigré and devotee of the National Review. As an established biographer from within the Washington consensus, he had to distance himself from Reagan’s views on ...”

“... escapades or of other people’s bad behaviour, a favourite being how, after a performance in John Osborne’s A Patriot for Me at Chichester for which he had been much praised, Alan was sitting in his dressing-room when there was a tentative knock on the door. It was Alec Guinness. He shook Alan’s hand, said, ‘You must be very tired,’ and ...”

“... neophytes – just knows the types so well: English insouciance, le chic français. The entrance hall is created from columns of illuminated Vogue covers arranged by colour (a bit gauche, non?) and leads into a film gallery, where clips of models dancing and cavorting, pulling faces and rolling their eyes, transfix the incoming crowd. All the footage is ...”

“... and where by the early 1920s both the poet laureate Robert Bridges and the future poet laureate John Masefield had established themselves in suburban comfort. Graves lived from 1919 to 1921 in Dingle Cottage at the bottom of Masefield’s garden. I walk my dog past the cottage quite often. It’s set down in a marshy hollow which has a faint air of primal ...”

“... analysis of the data has revealed that making a sequence of three-point baskets has almost no bearing on the likelihood of making the next one, which remains determined by a player’s basic skill level (some players are more likely to make the shot than others, but that is just because they are consistently better at it, not because they are ...”

“... sympathise with the task of the editors, L.G. Mitchell and the late Dame Lucy Sutherland. There is no general theme that ties the history of the 18th century together, nor are there solid historiographical precedents for writing a history of Oxford in relation to society. The bewildering events of the reigns of James II, William and Mary, Queen Anne and the ...”

“... the recipes in the book of 1861 entitled Beeton’s Book of Household Management. In fact there is no connection: something which was deplored even at the time of the centenary of publication 38 years ago, when Elizabeth David pointed out that the currently available Mrs Beeton didn’t contain a single recipe from the original. That this is an odd state of ...”

“... Hellman accepts the offer. All then is giddy alacrity. Like Jane Eyre setting off for Thornfield Hall, or the excitable governess departing for Bly at the opening of The Turn of the Screw, Mahoney promptly leaves her parents’ house in dreary Milton, Massachusetts, and heads for the sun-dappled Vineyard, revelling in fantasies about the marvellous ...”

“... in fact add up to a historically significant shift in the foundations of America’s global power? No question, Trump has done massive damage to the dignity of the American presidency. Even allowing for the personal and political failings of some previous incumbents, he marks a new low. What ought to be of no less concern is ...”

“... over property. Absentee landlordism further complicated matters. My parents, for instance, had no idea how much land they owned but it was a hell of a lot since its sale kept them going for a long time. Tariq Ali at the protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, London, 1968. Initially both my grandfathers belonged to the faction that ...”

“... of art had not changed in the fifty-year interval.) Otherwise he kept textual silence. He issued no manifestos and gave no press interviews until his final decade. All this through a period when artists took over the colour supplements, and the easel painter seemed vieux jeu compared to the ...”