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“... his political judgments are not easily separated from his aesthetic and moral ones. Reading John Stuart Mill made him think about the ‘conglomerated mediocrity’ that surrounded him in Britain: ‘the narrowing of men’s minds and energies’, ‘the constant increasing superficiality of life’, and of ‘general human interests’ being ‘reduced to ...”

“... and historical canon largely involved the insertion, repudiation or reordering of a cast of dead white males. Since then, there have been efforts to expand disciplinary canons to incorporate more women and greater racial and ethnic diversity. At first glance, the inclusion of Catharine Macaulay’s writings in the influential Cambridge Texts in the History ...”

“... seeing, confesses to a similar sluggishness of feeling: Twenty-some years ago, I read Graham Stuart Thomas’s ‘Colour in the Winter Garden’. I didn’t plant a winter garden, but the book led on to his rose books: ‘The Old Shrub Roses’, ‘Shrub Roses of Today’, and the one about climbers and ramblers. (‘Horse-Chestnut Trees and ...”

“... were so many Saturday evening light entertainment shows with sleazy male comedians, groups of white male singers in blackface, teams of young women in uncomfortable outfits kicking like horses trained to do dressage. At the time I had no words for the wretched feelings such programmes gave me, but looking back on it ‘WE’RE NOT BEAUTIFUL, WE’RE NOT ...”

“... and self-interest. Because it benefits everyone – ‘the most vital of all interests’, John Stuart Mill called it, which no one can ‘possibly do without’ – it is immune to politics. Yet, as Arnold Wolfers wrote years ago, security is an ‘ambiguous symbol’, which ‘may not have any precise meaning at all’. It allows political leaders to ...”

“... in his opening sentences. Turning to page one of Talking It Over and reading that ‘My name is Stuart, and I remember everything,’ one can be pretty sure that Stuart’s problem is going to be that he can’t forget (and sure enough, 250 pages later, Stuart’s ex-wife is forced to ...”

“... of a pastiche of the Arts versus Science debate of the Sixties. Fogel is the champion of the ‘white woolly warmth of the quantitative revolution’, in which traditional ‘literary’ history will be displaced by a new ‘scientific’ history based on statistics and computing. Elton dissents, arguing against high-level generalisation and reasserting the ...”

“... twice, first Donald Ferguson with whom she spent two years in Burma and then, by common law, Stuart Edmonds, a wealthy dilettante artist. She had two children, to whom she appeared indifferent: a daughter who died in infancy and a son who was killed in World War Two. She fictionalised both her husbands, Ferguson appearing most memorably as the ...”

“... home about. Nell’s university friend Mal is flaky and given to disappearing acts; her housemate Stuart leaves his washing in the machine until it stinks. Carmel, whose story is threaded through Nell’s, admits to preferring men to women but knows few good ones personally. There is Edgardo, an ‘arrogant young man’ who got her pregnant and then broke ...”

“... to saints. But the Rent Strikes brought her out to the world with her small fists clenched in a white-knuckle fury. Fathers were dying in trenches. Children and wives were put out on the street. Effie was sick at her Glasgow windows. And looking down she saw other women, swaying sick at their windows too. Women stood on tenement stairs, covering their ...”

“... in World War Two, his distinguishing physical feature is a ‘dissident’ thatch of prematurely white hair. A brilliant rhetorician and provocateur of student action, Marquis is a maverick politically, having left the Party in 1956. The founder of Thought and Action, he has lost control of the journal to a younger clique of more fashionable ...”

“... of the practical responsibility falls to three female members of that family. Of her two sons, Stuart, a policeman, thinks she should be in a council home: ‘Grandma had paid her taxes and was entitled and that was that.’ Charlie, a successful broker, is willing to pay the rent for the house where she lives, and to hire a variety of helpers or ...”

“... coats and horses repeat the ruddy tone of the wallpaper and soft furnishings, which the dazzlingly white, textureless paper punctuates and preserves from monotony. In this programme of simultaneous modernisation and antiquation, no other branch of art would have been as serviceable as the sporting print. It is so entirely without pretensions. It does not ...”

“... carelessly frank and ingenious way ... close-cropped, bullet-head, of fair weight, almost quite white; laughing little hazel eyes, jolly hooked nose and most definite mouth; short, short (five feet three or two at the most), swells slightly in the middle – soft, sausage-like on the whole – and ends neatly in fat little feet and hands.’ If the ...”

“... and then only, can I forbid my mind its usual indulgence of floating free. I need to get black on white, words on paper, those formulations known as thought on the page. I shouldn’t go so far as to say that this is painful work. When it is working well, I know none better. But when it isn’t working well it is frustrating, irritating, infuriating. What ...”