“... smile to herself and sit back again.’ When George’s daughter Anne was born in 1919 and son Michael in 1921, the sisters became enthusiastic babysitters and general chroniclers of their brother’s household. ‘I think George enjoys the thrill she gets when she gives her name in shops,’ Lolly wrote. ‘Mrs W.B. Yeats.’ Lily thought her ...”

“... the floor of a Dominican church. Among the gravestones was a particularly striking one in grey-white marble with pink and blue veins. Two helmets with slits for eyes faced each other, like a pair of beaky dolphins about, clangingly, to kiss: ‘Tomb Slab of an English Couple’, the label in Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum says. The couple were ...”

“... was ‘a call for a return to the 1950s’. The mock-arcadia of its ending, returning to the white picket fence of the opening but with everything slightly off, leaves us in little doubt that the dream and the nightmare inhabit each other. Jeffrey and Frank are two halves of a whole: MacLachlan’s boyish face sometimes flickers with dead-eyed ...”

“... especially in America, where Israeli propaganda seems to lead a life of its own. Whereas, in 1975, Michael Adams and Christopher Mayhew were able to write about a coherent but unstated policy of unofficial British press censorship, according to which unpleasant truths about Zionism were systematically suppressed, the situation is not nearly as obvious so far ...”

“... lined up to replace him included Jim Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Tony Benn, Anthony Crosland, Michael Foot and Denis Healey. It was, by any historical standards, an impressive cast list. The Parliamentary Labour Party made the right choice in plumping for Callaghan over the initial favourite, Healey, and the surprise early front-runner, Foot. Of all the ...”

“... and every major political system and religion. The book would like to do for free speech what Michael Sandel’s Justice did for justice; and the aspiration in this sort of endeavour is to address a high-minded public without assuming much previous knowledge.An optimistic ground tone is preserved throughout: the multiplication of our connections will ...”

“... left behind were that it should be used in any way possible – short of falling into the hands of Michael Winner – ‘to make money for my boys’: Mark Pearce, her second husband, and Alexander, the couple’s son, born in 1983. As Edmund Gordon says towards the beginning of his biography, Carter was never so widely acclaimed in life as she would be in the ...”

“... and give readings there. After he moved to Princeton he visited the president and stayed in the White House, and, being so reserved and guarded, so conservative and respectable, was mentioned as a possible president for Germany once the war was over. In Los Angeles, where he moved in 1941 and lived until his return to Switzerland in 1952, Mann built a house ...”

“... sale is entitled Princess with Orchid). He is said to have retained his prewar habit of wearing white kid gloves even while presiding over huge camouflage workshops. Dunoyer de Ségonzac, another member of the French camouflage section, was known for still lifes featuring eggs, bottles and cabbages, but not distorted guitars of Picasso’s Cubist kind. Some ...”

“... is in the nature of Macbeth to be swift and utterly single-minded,’ the critic Michael Long writes. As though there must be no time for hesitation or revision or doubt. As though there is a danger that momentum might be lost. A change of heart – or even the possibility of giving up on the usurpation of Duncan – must not, cannot, be ...”

“... not be Czechoslovakia’. Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the White House press secretary called Sharon’s remarks ‘unacceptable’. Sharon offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to persuade the administration and the American people that the United States and Israel faced a common threat ...”

“... a snowy, traffic-stopping night in Brighton when the people grouped themselves fearlessly in the white space of the street, which suddenly looked exactly like an old painting. This comic space is partly, as people say nowadays, a matter of gender. After remarking that real houses in ancient Athens were small while the public spaces were magnificent. Barton ...”

“... peasant who, having stumbled on political power, is unsure how to wield it. Reporting on Michael Portillo’s visit as defence minister to Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Macedonia in 1996, Anne Applebaum (coincidentally, for the Evening Standard) has a good old chuckle: Up and down the red carpets he walks, Her Majesty’s aircraft just behind ...”

“... is not a substitute. Alexander Robertus Todd, Baron Trumpington, was the son of a responsible white-collar employee of a railway company who later became managing director of a substantial department store in Glasgow. Todd describes him as an ambitious and hard-working man who went to work at the age of 13 and from then on was self-taught by attendance at ...”