“... for British humour, history and literature. The eponymous hero of his previous novel, Tyll (2017), may be a German magician, tightrope-walker and trickster, but for a time he serves at the court of the ‘winter queen’, Elizabeth (wife of Friedrich and daughter of James VI of Scotland), who’s a theatre enthusiast and consoles Shakespeare on the death of ...”

“... yes? And all of this is true of time, too, not only sound. Vibrations from the past or future may also be received, perhaps also through the teeth. Or through your pen, the poet as seismographer.Anamnesis has a few meanings: in Platonic philosophy it’s the remembrance of innate knowledge acquired before birth; in medicine it’s the word for a ...”

“... but quite possibly potent new party, the idea that socialists should stick it out inside Labour may finally be losing its allure. Both these parties are likely to have leverage at Westminster if the next election produces a hung Parliament. It’s also hard to imagine a contemporary politician of any party producing a collection as wide-ranging and ...”

“... degree had been in ‘moral sciences’, i.e. philosophy), as ‘the form under which the mind may most clearly and freely contemplate the human situation’. Basil Willey, Quiller-Couch’s successor as King Edward VII Chair of English Literature, transformed the English Moralists course into a general intellectual history of England between the 17th and ...”

“... I am already saying ‘I got six clams in the river and some weat six feet tall.’ The spelling may be out but the facts are there. Nobody can teach you this. You know what made me laugh? The fight with Wallace Stevens. Baker’s Life of Me did not say much about this because Baker did not know but there was a letter I wrote to Sara Murphy that gives the ...”

“... is hard to say. But at least it communicates a sense of exciting heterogeneity. Older readers may turn to the end item, by Angus Wilson, anticipating a return to the form in which he first excelled. But ‘Sri Lankan Journal’ is thin stuff. Never having kept a journal before, he tells us, Wilson decided to do so during the travelling that coincided with ...”

“... nella citta Ha ha ha, ha ha ha – for he was certainly an opera buff, even if his expertise may in part have rested on a self-confessed preference for ‘fleshy women’ over skinny ballet dancers. When the 24-year-old Callas appeared on the Verona scene in 1947, his friends described her as ‘a sack of potatoes’. Meneghini was then a dashing ...”

“... abdication’. His gratification that this framework accommodates the findings of his contributors may be somewhat overdone. His second synthesis is a broader one which includes the lesser. It has to do with the role of the landed men in English life in a much more general sense, and represents a current reinter-pretational convergence. It is that the landed ...”

“... or quintet in the evening walks out in the morning for the purpose of inviting any friends he may chance to meet; and as the slightest acquaintance is sufficient, no difficulty occurs. That taste for instrumental music and ad hoc parties had been growing for half a century. Moreover, the greatest composers are usually conservatives before they are ...”

“... British attitudes to the governing of Africa and which Lamb elsewhere rightly decries. Numeiri may indeed be the genuine article, but the notion is so hard to define that it would take only a slight realignment of the logic to adduce a General Stroessner or a Castro as an example of the same breed. One is left with the feeling that the old saw about ...”

“... of generalised abstraction. His life ended in suicide in 1954. It is to be hoped that there may be additions to Mr Hodges’s splendid book by some of his close friends mentioned here. I do not believe, on the evidence provided, all that Mr Hodges writes towards the end of the book, when he represents Anglo-American security precautions after the war as ...”

“... breaking-up of monopolies – a dangerous, even totalitarian form of collectivism. The Cold War may have undermined the idea of the state as a regulator of capitalism, but it gave a powerful impetus to the creation of a ‘national security state’: ‘entrenched, constantly expanding and largely invulnerable to political attacks; a state that forged ...”

“... guests who threw corn-ears at the bridal pair (no confetti, please), and all who made ‘rather a May game of marriage, than a holy institution of God’. William Gouge, a London minister, was a little more relaxed: in 1622 he allowed ‘all those lawful customs that are used for the setting forth of the outward solemnity thereof, as meeting of ...”

“... up. ‘Can I ask you one question?’   ‘Of course, ask away!’   ‘I fear that I may have difficulty getting hired. If they will not take me because of my past, can I turn to you?’   ‘Yes, yes, of course!’ the official exclaimed warmly. The official feels no need for either formal coldness or for guilt; he can be merry about his ...”

“... of popular culture, a fascination with bizarre, paranoid visions, a feel for family detail. He may be the most natural writer in this group, the most effortless stylist, but he doesn’t quite match the others in the power of his imagination, or hasn’t done so yet. His most successful work to date is a short story that departs from his usual ...”