“... the first. These essays are, in fact, chapters in the intellectual and political biography of a young Croslandite (once a Bevanite) who became an increasingly bruised and disenchanted Labour MP, a founder member of the SDP, and who now (I imagine) stands between the Kinnockian Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. From the point of view of the reader ...”

“... things apply to Johnson, but a Venn diagram of these various characteristics would also include Michael Gove, Douglas Carswell, Daniel Hannan and Jacob Rees-Mogg. The result of these disparate characteristics is a comfortable familiarity with the myths and rituals of the British state, but a blasé indifference to the impact of policy. As Ian Jack pointed ...”

“... people who identified themselves as ‘English’, 32.4 million chose that as their sole identity. Michael Ashcroft’s referendum-day poll found that 79 per cent of people who described themselves as ‘English not British’ voted Leave. But there is less evidence for the claim that the English voted for, or currently want, constitutional change. Despite the ...”

“... a heavy price had been paid for them. Much German scholarship had become dry and ponderous, as the young Nietzsche pointed out: but this charge could not be levelled against the greatest scholars, like Mommsen and Wilamowitz, and German Classical scholarship continued to flourish and to play an important role in the life of the nation until well into the 20th ...”

“... many things’, has been summoned by King Minos to find his missing son, Glaucus (in most accounts young Glaucus has fallen into a jar of honey). The play turns on a second request: that Polyidus bring him back to life. When he refuses, Minos entombs him alive with Glaucus. While interred, he learns from two snakes how to use herbs to revive the boy. They are ...”

“... parts of the country: Barnsley, Edinburgh, the Best of British Authors campaign, the Best of Young British Authors, Christian Book Fortnight, the Spring Military Book Campaign, National Children’s Book Week, Map and Guide Month, Thriller Week ... And the Hungarian book trade is necessarily a great deal more centralised than the British. There are far ...”

“... great Labour landslide year, that the first Nuffield election study appeared, with the hand of a young David Butler already apparent. It was, sadly, a jejune and disappointing volume which explains very little of the last great realigning election of modern times. Since then Butler has taken an increasingly dominant role in the enterprise and the books have ...”

“... back to ancient Egypt and the correlation of beauty with power would probably not have caused any young woman to lift an eyebrow, let alone to dream of collagen implants. Monumental images were limited (no movie screens or giant billboards) and controlled (no nubile lovelies cavorting on the TV in the living-room), so that beauty could become one of the ...”

“... at court. Pampered, dominated, and early inculcated in the family trait of nonchalant arrogance, young William became a fashionable and good-looking presence in high society without acquiring the vigour and determination necessary to kindle his innate intelligence. Shortly after becoming heir to the Melbourne title in 1805, he took the unstable Caroline ...”

“... real books to his name and selections of work in the two most influential anthologies of the time, Michael Roberts’s Faber Book of Modern Verse and Yeats’s Oxford Book of Modern Verse. Eliot was a sincere admirer and generous patron; Yeats was delighted with Barker’s ‘lovely subtle mind and a rhythmic invention comparable to Gerard Hopkins’. What ...”

“... of the prospects and the profit of doing it. One of Baldwin’s earliest biographers, G.M. Young, is told off (nearly all previous writers on Baldwin are told off for talking nonsense of one kind or another) for initiating a strand of interpretation ‘where psychological or temperamental supposition replaces adequate historical ...”

“... Roosevelt (‘the greatest publicity man of that time’, according to Sinclair), who sent the young author a three-page analysis of The Jungle and an invitation to visit him at the White House for further discussion. These events led directly to the passing of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act (although not, to Sinclair’s ...”

“... the Reliance Controls factory at Swindon by the structural engineer Anthony Hunt and the young Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, who were then part of Team 4; and the first hyperbolic paraboloid roof in Britain, created in 1957 by Robert Townsend for the Wilton Royal carpet factory. Townsend’s own house in the otherwise benighted village of ...”

“... greatest figure ever to adorn the international capital markets, greater even than J.P. Morgan and Michael Milken in their primes. At a dinner in 1834, someone expressed the hope that the Rothschild children were not too attached to money and business: the rentier cast of mind had already set by this period. Nathan answered: I wish them to give mind, and ...”

“... of the ‘English spirit’ and would therefore counteract the notion that ‘the minds of young women are becoming unEnglish.’ At Oxford there was little support for English studies, but in 1873 English was included in the examinations for a Pass Degree. After a public campaign during the 1880s, a final Honours School of English Language and ...”