“... and horrible. Few people, after all, think about philosophers much, and some of those who do may well regard them with a mildly bemused respect. But the subject does collect a familiar style of complaint: that philosophy gets no answers, or no answers to any question that any grown-up person would worry about, or no answer which would be worth worrying ...”

“... toffs. Eliot, who had come to see the village from which one of his ancestors – Andrew Eliot – may have set off for America in the 17th century, was indeed seeking to find a kinship with this still somewhat feudal community. Yet the next sentence of his letter makes it clear he was unsettled to find that the ‘cousin of mine’ in East Coker was not ...”

“... I did it. It was a painful business, as the writing of books tends to be. It is true that there may be in one’s life a book that beautifully offers itself, pleading to be taken, simply to be written down, but like other such offers, this one is made only, I think, when one is fairly young. Most of us are self-sentenced to a year or more of un-epiphanic ...”

“... In opposition, Harold Wilson spoke out against American involvement in Vietnam. In May 1954, during his Bevanite phase, he declared that ‘not a man, not a gun, must be sent from this country to defend French colonisation in Indo-China … we must not join or in any way encourage an anti-Communist crusade in Asia under the leadership of the Americans or anyone else ...”

“... massed choirs and a packed flag-waving audience ruled out on medical grounds,’ Richard Morrison wrote, ‘there will never be a better moment to drop that toe-curlingly embarrassing anachronistic farrago of nationalistic songs that concludes the Last Night of the Proms.’ He was referring to ‘Rule Britannia!’ and ‘Land of Hope and ...”

“... other crimes, including doing barely credible damage to the Duke of Norfolk’s deer-park – he may have thought it was Buckingham’s – twice breaking into Combe Abbey to steal its goods and insult the abbot, and repeatedly mustering large numbers of armed men to lead in theft, raid, or riot. High points of his career include breaking out of prison at ...”

“... genetics, and enthusiastic about the potential benefits. On occasion, however, this enthusiasm may have more to do with the pure excitement of the science than with any very clear practical consequences in the foreseeable future. The most commonly heard justification of the billions currently being spent on the Human Genome Project is that it will lead to ...”

“... was later translated into Old English, and further expanded by his near namesake Aelfric Bata, who may have been schoolmaster at Christ Church, Canterbury, and who wrote Colloquia of his own. Despite these admirable efforts, Latin was and remained a hard language to master. Reading some of Orme’s examples, one begins to wonder how anyone ever learned ...”

“... a cunning Scottish put-down, since character is just what the English pride themselves on. They may not bestride the world in intellect, cuisine or emotional intimacy, but these fancy pursuits can be left to foreigners, and don’t count for much compared to their own moral robustness. At the core of this moral character lies the spirit of liberty: liberty ...”

“... the stricken village or town ... This is Gavin Ewart, who adds: If you’re accident-prones you may hear those dread tones and meet that baleful eye! There are also substantial essays on our political culture, on economic and social policy, on defence and foreign affairs. Collectively, what they propose is a new polity based upon a redefined notion of ...”

“... the Prime Minister’s son, Brunei and Harrods. The story which surfaced in the Observer of 18 May 1986 was, to be frank, a bit puzzling. It was decorated with a large photograph of the Swami in beard and beads, and he certainly could not complain of the way in which he was introduced to the British public: A rich and mysterious Indian guru is emerging as ...”

“... and access to wealth almost invariably affects or confirms a fictional character’s identity. It may do so for the better or worse, and either way it tends to act as an enticement to readers. We like to think of the wealthy as enjoying their wealth, but we also like to be told that they don’t always enjoy it. In fiction the rich and the rest of us can ...”

“... have the idea that we live in a world that exists independently of us and our thoughts. This idea may be called realism. Almost everyone shares it, and even those whose philosophies seemingly deny it really accept it in some form – some literary theorists, for instance, who say that we can never compare our texts to ‘the world’ but only to other ...”

“... as the tragedian Elisa Rachel, whom Charlotte Brontë had seen in London in 1851. Sarah Bernhardt may be better known today, but it was Rachel who haunted the English literary imagination throughout the 19th century. In James’s The Tragic Muse, the Jewish Cockney actress Miriam Rooth claims to be in the same style as ‘that woman’, and George Eliot’s ...”

“... synonymous, and of the Whigs as an effete clique of reactionary landed aristocrats, these claims may come as a surprise. They do, however, go with the grain of much recent research, in which the leading Whig magnates have been portrayed as industrious, responsible, widely-read statesmen working to a serious reform agenda. Even before Gladstone had committed ...”