“... the signature of the institutional, the establishment’s individual voice. It makes one think of Emily Dickinson’s ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you?’ How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! Writing anonymously, you could be ‘nobody’ precisely because you ...”

“... about a poet, but not so much as does the characteristic internal structure of his or her lyrics. Emily Dickinson’s binary and ternary forms are symbols of her bitter contrastive briskness and ironic point-making; Whitman’s expansive middles, with their ranging glances, show a poet who sits down in the centre of his subject-matter and gathers it ...”

“... were certainly interesting. She was physically enthusiastic about sex, and had an affair with Emily Dickinson’s brother Austin which her husband not only condoned but aided and abetted. However, all this is recorded in the diaries in a far from neutral spirit. To Mabel her sex life proved something: ‘The greatest proof I have ever had that I am ...”

“... all the truth but tell it slant, Success in circuit lies.” Or was it,’ she asked the room, ‘Emily Dickinson?’ Unsurprisingly, the room did not answer. ‘But one mustn’t talk about it or it will never get written.’ It was no comfort to the prime minister to reflect that whereas most people when claiming to want to write a book would never get ...”

“... action as a result of which Sandy is converted to Catholicism? Or the departure of one girl, Joyce Emily, influenced by Brodie, to fight on Franco’s side and to die in Spain? And are we always to accept as the case whatever the voice of the narrator seems to be telling us (‘The Lloyds were Catholics and so were made to have a lot of children by ...”