“... Russell’s autobiography stresses that while outwardly well-behaved, he ‘found living at home only endurable at the cost of complete silence about everything that interested me’. Barbara Wootton and her childhood friends went further, and fended off the adults by evolving a private language. Only the exceptional child writes down his ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... carpets and ruined people for whom the morning was a long way down. I guess I could have gone home, but something in me wanted to stay, and so I did. When it’s over, when your youth is gone, you wonder what those times were all about, but there’s no point asking. They were about Soho and a whole lot of nonsense you’ll never hear again.There were ...”

“... The government and the TUC found themselves in a difficult position. One minister, F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, remarked that ‘it would be possible to say without exaggeration of the miners’ leaders that they were the stupidest men in England if we had not had frequent occasion to meet the owners.’ But despite their irritation, ministers were, as one ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... men learn to their cost when they kill the sacred Cattle of the Sun. Homer’s Odysseus makes it home because he is able, temporarily, to suppress his own desires – for meat and wine, for his wife, for control of his household and land, for slaughter, for victory over time and the threat of being forgotten, for a glorious eternal name. But there is no ...”

“... a pleasant middle-class childhood, bookish and theatrical (they gave a performance of Faust at home, ‘with Mabel in the title role and Aubrey, decked in blonde plaits, as Marguerite’), they moved as one into advanced London circles, decorating their drawing room in the requisite style, lifted from À rebours: ‘deep orange walls, black doors 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”