“... book-length literary criticism is unimpressive. There isn’t much to choose, for example, between Margaret Dickie Uroff (‘As they developed, Plath came to locate herself at the fulcrum, while Hughes stood back to explore the nature of the universe’) and Mary Lynn Broe (‘To discuss only Plath’s self-sufficient system of poetic devices – even her ...”

“... most persuasive conservative arguments are still those current since the days of Burke and Adam Smith – but because of what has happened in the world since the Second World War. The various changes which have undermined the presuppositions of traditional socialism are by now familiar enough. But their cumulative effect has taken time to sink in. The ...”

“... a path leading back to the finding of husbands and wives. In a review in these pages recently of Margaret Forster’s biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning I commented on the way in which the author of Aurora Leigh makes use of Marian Erle to get her heroine the desired husband. It seems that in her study of the novel in verse Barbara Gelpi has even seen ...”

“... music has also stormed the citadel of literary fiction, and characters in novels such as Karline Smith’s Moss Side Massive and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity are identified, and minutely differentiated, by their music tastes. The characters in The Black Album tend not to be pinned down by their music tastes. Chili, the central character’s brother, is, in ...”

“... the Painted Hall at Greenwich. It was a hymn to the glories of free trade and the spirit of Adam Smith, almost as baroque as James Thornhill’s enormous ceiling with its allegories of Time Exposing Truth and other desirable outcomes. A fine piece of Boris bravura, if you overlooked the fact that, during the heyday he was hymning, Britain, like many rapidly ...”

“... at any rate appear to be, so many more of them than there were. Some may attribute the change to Margaret Thatcher, with her outspoken determination to roll back the encroaching state, her vehement belief in free, competitive markets, her implacable hostility to the trade unions, and her famous remark that ‘there is no such thing as society.’ But as ...”

“... chivalry stands contempt. A pleasanter irony, also involving chivalry, arises in the story of Margaret Nicholson, a seamstress, who in 1786 approached George III with a written petition and, concealed beneath it, a knife. ‘The king was saved by his exceedingly fine manners,’ for as he took the petition he bowed deeply to the woman and avoided the ...”

“... don’t know how seriously they’ve thought about paying for it. We can be pretty sure that John Smith, and the Labour mainstream generally, takes a less hysterical view about the loss of sovereignty than even Douglas Hurd finds it prudent to disclose before a Tory audience. The Liberal Democrats, being shamelessly federal, have fewer problems, though ...”

“... for the quick sketch that captured the essence of a man in a few physical details. Logan Pearsall Smith called him ‘the Rembrandt of English prose’. In his French Revolution, his private letters, and elsewhere, he dashes off one vignette after another. Fred Kaplan quotes one of the less well-known of these cameo portraits, depicting the French historian ...”

“... from the Philological Society and the biographical dictionary from the commercial publisher George Smith. With these two projects OUP inherited a curatorial responsibility which has, over the years, become increasingly burdensome. Unlike the National Heritage Commission, OUP has the task not just of conserving important national properties – that is to ...”

“... while Cook duly backed off. The consequence was a wholly bogus election in which John Prescott and Margaret Beckett ran in a no-hope contest, theoretically against Blair, but actually against one another for the deputy leadership. This was no fluke: both Kinnock and Smith got elected as foregone conclusions in mainly bogus ...”

“... relationship with the poet H. Phelps Putnam, her short-lived marriage to Ogden Ludlow Smith (who seemed to think it was longer-lived), her affairs with her Hollywood agent Leland Hayward, Howard Hughes (producer, pilot and national hero), John Ford and Spencer Tracy. Neither Ford nor Tracy would leave their wives for her, both were prone to ...”

“... in the script. The country rejects the worn-out panaceas of the Labour administration and elects Margaret Thatcher, and she, with what Cameron calls ‘huge courage and perseverance’, sets Britain on a dynamic new course towards its now tremulous destiny as financial capitalism’s leading counting house. Thatcher is the phoenix; the 1970s, the ...”

“... weird genealogies are disclosed. ‘Angus Wilson, the novelist, who bore a striking resemblance to Margaret Rutherford, the actress who originally played Miss Marple’, is present. Also namechecked are Patricia Hodge, Simon Russell Beale, Giles Gordon (once Moorcock’s literary agent), Andrea Dworkin and Iris Murdoch, who ‘sat smiling into the ...”