“... E.P. Thompson, historian and peacemaker, known as Edward to his friends, died at his home near Worcester in 1993. Four years on, Beyond the Frontier is a volume of material set aside far earlier. Indeed, there occurs in it a passing reference to ‘the raw material for half-finished books on William Blake and Customs in Common’, works long since published ...”

“... The first few messages say There are clues everywhere. Then a message is delivered to Rebus’s home: For those who read between the times. It becomes clear that the killer has some personal connection to the detective. An Eng. Lit. professor at Edinburgh University calls Rebus to say that, as the author of Reader Exercises and Directed Exegetic ...”

“... of British society. It is hard to believe that he ever knew what was really going on inside the Home Office, or the armed forces, or the City of London, or the countryside, or the weapons industry, or NHS hospitals, or inner-city classrooms, or prisons, or PFI projects, or the boardrooms of multinational corporations. It might be said that he didn’t need ...”

“... large cars”, an orchard, a walled garden, tennis courts (two grass and one hard), stables, a home farm producing milk, cream and eggs, and three cottages for members of staff’. This establishment, Lewis adds with his customary twinkle, employed 11 indoor servants, as well as a carpenter, several gardeners, a chauffeur called Collins who, according to ...”

“... last novel, Woolson had long put America behind her. ‘I always liked the idea of going away from home for a time,’ she had said when still a schoolgirl, and the death of her mother in 1879 freed her to do as she liked. In November of that year she set sail for Europe, and never crossed the Atlantic again. She later claimed to be ‘the most domestic woman ...”

“... to know how exactly the plan to stop Stalker was arrived at: all we can be certain of is that a Home Office official met with James Anderton, Colin Sampson, Sir Philip Myers, and Lawrence Byford (HMI for North West and Ulster) during the Police Federation Conference in Scarborough, just one week before Stalker was removed from the RUC inquiry. It is a tacit ...”

“... with Indian women (in 2004, a large Cree delegation travelled to Orkney to visit ‘the home of their grandfathers’). Some Scots gave real support to the ‘first peoples’ in times of crisis. But in the long term, the joint endeavour turned into what Devine calls a ‘historic disaster’ for Indian societies, ravaged by disease, alcoholism and ...”

“... of Russians to Britain was good for business … Wealthy Russians buy property in London and the Home Counties, send their children to British private schools, and go shopping in Harrods (and Selfridges). Increasingly, Russians come to the UK to settle their legal disputes, commercial and matrimonial. All this is a boon to headmasters, divorce ...”

“... much of it to the Polish guys, but they said they already had enough and had a long way to walk home. An old black lady in a claret hat came round and picked up items here and there. ‘Very good here,’ she said. ‘Terrible to waste things just like this.’ ‘This is England now,’ I said to Alf, his face lighted somewhat ghoulishly under the lamp on ...”

“... is become of Jane?’ ‘Oh, she is gone to dwell by London-wall’) and reminisce (‘But, Lord, the prankes that we mad-wenches playde’), especially about drinking (‘No Musique in the evenings we did lacke,/Such dauncing, Coussen, you would hardly thinke it/Whole pottles of the daintiest burned Sacke,/T’would do a Wench good at the hart to ...”

“... of my son,’ Coates said in his acceptance speech for the National Book Award. ‘I can’t go home and tell him that it’s going to be OK … I just don’t have that right, I just don’t have that power.’ The power he does have, the power anyone who is black can have, he decides, is a negative one: it lies in the refusal to buy into the possibility ...”

“... asleep. Tell them I ...’ From her temporary bed-clothed refuge the much-desired Flora could be Lord Jim tailing off into ellipsis, caesura, the cut-off. She could also, of course, be on a page of dotted Irish playfulness by Sterne or Beckett. Banville knows, hereabouts, what his house and lineage are. And his readers should be up on what to expect in the ...”

“... in a fine flurry. So what’s the point of effort in that case? Why didn’t old Roy stay home and write books Instead of pounding through this paper chase, The sweat of which does little for his looks? The bees have got the right approach to space: The moths flap uselessly like fish on hooks ... The tension’s fearful and one feels no better for ...”

“... to make a happy second marriage to Benita Pelly. As well as writing to her daily when absent from home, Brooke also began a diary essentially as a means of communicating with her. Many extracts are quoted, including an arrangement during the phoney war months for each partner to read the same passage in the Bible every day at the same time. In addition, the ...”

“... but romance. Garibaldi’s expedition led to an outburst of enthusiasm from unlikely quarters. Lord Shaftesbury wrote to Cavour in 1860: ‘Your revolution is the most wonderful, the most honourable and the most unexpected manifestation of courage, virtue and self-control the world has ever seen.’ Cavour himself wrote to Durando that ‘the expedition of ...”