“... point in the same words – demonstrating the impressive Zhdanovite discipline that is the special mark of the faction. All of them seemed to regard the affair as some sort of heavenly revenge for the sin of radical promiscuity; much as they have represented the Aids crisis as a vengeance on Sixties morality. The ethical nullity of these positions never got ...”

“... on the English department reading list, along with Taylor Caldwell and all those other books by Twain. I read Sydney Sheldon’s first five novels, Judith Krantz’s first three; until I went to college, I believed that Watership Down was the best book I’d ever read – and I was right. What attracted me then, though I didn’t realise it until years ...”

“... of the sky at the moment of Christ’s death: ‘And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent’ (Matthew 27.51). Turbulence indeed. This, it seems, is what the Magi were after when they sought the child in the manger, and it is what they are after now as they await, ‘all ...”

“... concern her staff, her family were actually rather relieved. She had always kept them up to the mark and age had not made her more indulgent. Reading, though, had. She left the family more to themselves, chivvied them hardly at all and they had an easier time all round. Hurray for books was their feeling, except when they were required to read them or when ...”