“... for a past homeland experienced at a distance and in conditions of relative ease. More often we read of poverty, distrust, conflict, self-doubt and legal insecurity, not only before and during World War Two but after it, in the new forms of persecution called up by the Cold War. This book is ungainly. It does not promise or perform completion ...”

“... islet is crammed with men: Chief Vorstenbosch, Deputy Melchior van Cleef, Dr Marinus, Senior Clerk Peter Fischer, Junior Clerk Ponke Ouwehand, Arie Grote, Piet Baert, Ivo Oost, Wybo Gerritszoon. Their conversation is as cacophonous as their names. For instance: ‘most of us hands gather of an evenin’ in my humble billet, eh, for a little hazard ...”

“... within the paper and without: Tim Bale, Nick Cohen, Anne Perkins, Michael White, Martin Kettle, Peter Hain, Alan Johnson, Tony Blair (twice), Jonathan Jones, Frank Field, David Miliband (whose razor-sharp instinct for leadership contests led him to back Liz Kendall), Steve Coogan, Matthew D’Ancona, Betty Boothroyd. Papers aren’t just papers any ...”

“... fans. ‘You would have thought I’d kidnapped the Lindbergh baby, the way some of the letters read,’ he said. Even the papers went for him after he played badly in his first All-Star Game, the mid-season showpiece between the best players in the American and National Leagues. He decided he had to look after himself. He was no fool. Even Joe DiMaggio ...”

“... that his job was being lined up for one of New Labour’s rising stars such as Jack Straw or Peter Mandelson, Cook may indeed have been thinking hard about escape routes to the European Commission or the Scottish Parliament, but that doesn’t mean he was already a busted flush. He did, after all, survive another five years – and when he finally left ...”

“... A piece of bloodied newspaper was found at the scene – the Morning Star. Yet Mr Kent read only the Times, the Frome Times and the Civil Service Gazette. Did this mean anything? Another clue was the household laundry book, with which the police became fixated. The Road Hill case was dense with fabric. The setting of the murder happened to be ...”

“... it to a system of decision-making which is thereby legitimated. Instead it rests on the ability to read the ebbs and flows of mood and opinion so as to anticipate what is coming, find a wave that it is useful to amplify, and capitalise on the temporary force and intensity of numbers. It is a practice of politics analogous (not coincidentally) to high-frequency ...”

“... quite suddenly, as I was looking for something else in the back pages of the impeccably learned (read: dry as dust) Review of English Studies for July 1949, there he was: ‘Frank Kermode’. Not, I was interested to note, ‘J.F. Kermode’ or any other variant that signalled the first name he never used. (It was one of the lesser indignities of his time in ...”

“... is a legal system in tatters.One apparently minor but actually serious event flagged up by SB is Peter Hain’s outing, under the shelter of parliamentary privilege, of Philip Green as the beneficiary of a court order giving temporary anonymity in a current case. MPs and peers – and certainly Lord Hain – know that the 1689 Bill of Rights, by barring the ...”

“... was particularly unimpressed by an unnaturally informative cloth label pasted to the back, which read: ‘Shakspere/Born April 23 = 1564/Died April 23 – 1616/Aged 52/This Likeness taken 1603/Age at that time 39 ys.’ Spielmann doesn’t say so, but it’s hard not to suspect that this label was written to overcompensate for that missing two-inch ...”

“... and ‘rather restless’ horde had come to listen to him preach. Amid the commotion he had to read out a passage from the Gospels twice, ‘for my voice is such that it will only carry in a great silence.’ In the 840s, two men dressed as monks arrived at the church of St Bénigne in Dijon with bones they claimed were relics. (Of which saint they ...”

“... his bleeding face, and if we are as severe as these editors, and if we want to keep that moment (Peter Brook, for example, didn’t), we have really to accept a version of the play that lacks over a hundred lines found only in the Folio. The General Introduction ably defends these editorial principles, and along the way gives a very lucid and engaging ...”

“... than their normal 33 per cent discount. The target audience, then, was not the common readers who read common novels, and the common shops which supplied them, but collectors of rare books, and, more importantly, dealers in rare books, some of whom would hold back copies until the edition had been exhausted and its market value had risen accordingly. The ...”

“... In the morning Frederick would walk to the Royal Torbay Yacht Club, drink a glass of sherry, read the newspapers and walk home for luncheon. In the afternoon he would walk back to the club and weigh himself. He died in 1901, leaving the family financially embarrassed. Clara preserved his last letter, the order of service from his funeral, some beech ...”

“... near the hearth, handy for pulling a volume out and leaning against the mantelpiece while he read a soulful passage’), and Lamming is more interested in old Lawson’s relationship with two women, his housekeeper and the intruding Moira Gelling. Of the two, Gelling is supposed to be the more intriguing, a spoilt middle-aged pussycat who has ...”