“... wakened by the growl of thunder and lightning.’ Into this ghostly idyll come two men: first, David Caravaggio, a friend of Hana’s father from before the war in Toronto; and later, a young sapper, Kirpal Singh, nicknamed Kip – a Sikh from the Punjab, who has been detailed to clear the area around the villa of ...”

“... As a young man working for Lord Beaver-brook’s broadsheet Daily Express, I used to have a highly pleasurable daydream in which the coincidence of my name being the same as my employer’s led to some confusion among the company lawyers, with the result that I became the proprietor on the Old Man’s death. I would visualise myself getting off the bus outside the old Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street, walking down to the entrance of the big black palace, taking the lift up to the second floor, and bursting into the editor’s office just as the morning conference was about to begin ...”

“... nature of the game.’ Following the ‘blackwash’ of England and the serious injuries to two young batsmen, he is moved to reiterate the ‘chilling dimension’ brought to the game by the undeniably brilliant but potentially lethal West Indian fast bowlers, hunting not in the traditional pairs but in packs. There is the danger of going over the top in ...”

“... sometimes like an efficient, pet-loving country gentlewoman, sometimes like a gallant and athletic young man. Then there is a good photograph of Kinanjui, a Kikuyu chieftain with whom she was friendly and whose death she describes and mourns in the sombre final section of her book. This epitaph for Kinanjui precedes a similar lament for Denys Finch-Hatton, her ...”

“... airport: men unthinkingly aim at them, reducing the amount of urine that ends up on the floor.David Cameron’s government, hungry for a new political idea but reluctant to rock any ideological boats, was quick to seize on ‘nudges’, along with its ‘Big Society’ vision of volunteering and social enterprise. What these things had in common was a ...”

“... a budget of £106 million in 2019; its car was the slowest on the grid by far. Most drivers start young, racing in go-karts from the age of five or six and moving up through Formulas 4, 3 and 2 before, if they’re lucky, getting a seat in an F1 car. It can cost £50,000 a year to compete on the karting circuit and £500,000 to race a season in Formula ...”

“... he made are also extremely pretty. Sunlight casts shadows of delicate wooden screens on walls, young women in elaborate clothes lead idle lives. There are bright flowers and pet animals. Surely this delectable environment, with its convincing sense of ease, is a true reflection of the timeless Orient – of a real alternative world? But Yeazell points out ...”

“... as though you’re having sexual intercourse’, while Neill prodded her stomach (she was too young to know what sex was, so she just panted). ‘The repressed ones have stomachs like wooden boards,’ Neill wrote to Reich of his pupils’ resistance, ‘but children begin to loosen up very quickly, and at once begin to be hateful and savage.’ Though ...”

“... had to be careful and was likely to be subject to gossip and censure whatever she did. As a young woman Kauffman was often described as a ‘coquette’: there was much speculation about her relationship with Joshua Reynolds, and Marat later claimed to have seduced her in London. There was no substance to most of it, but Kauffman knew the risks she ...”

“... Cicero referred to the poets of Catullus’ circle, disparagingly, as the Neoterics (‘The Young Ones’) or the New Poets, but their novelty was firmly rooted in the past, since they drew inspiration from the poetry of Hellenistic Alexandria of the mid third century BCE, especially that of Callimachus. Hellenistic culture, imported or looted, in the ...”

“... workers. The only way she can quiet these intrusive thoughts is by singing the first line of David Bowie’s ‘Kooks’ over and over.All Fours, July’s second novel, is about a ‘semi-famous’ interdisciplinary artist whose work is filled with ‘unlikely couplings, unauthorised sex, surrealism and a shit ton of lesbianism’. It would be easy to ...”

“... author: ‘does he consider that such passages...would be apt to raise a blush on the cheek of a young English female?’) Ideologically, Podsnap is a prude, a blinkered patriot and a philistine, and temperamentally he is a bully. The malicious remarks about Forster which have come down divide into those which see the ‘toady’, the upstart ‘Butcher’s ...”

“... problems. Thus it was natural for him to jot down à propos of Chapter Five: ‘Bring in the other young couple. Yes ... Mixture of Oriental blood – or imperceptibly acquired nature – in them. Yes.’ But what the eventual destiny of Helena and Neville Landless was to be is for ever withheld. Unless he kept a secret second set of strategic plans we know ...”

“... running its own partisans, SOE was an intelligence professional’s bad dream. June 1942: enter young Leo Marks. Having failed to convince the cryptographic services that he was suitable for the coding unit at Bletchley, but evincing a wayward brilliance that indicated he was too smart to do routine work, Marks was assigned to keep an eye on the coding ...”

“... where Ian Hamilton, editor of the New Review, was usually to be found. The suppliants, mostly young men not then long out of the universities, have very properly combined to congratulate the sage or gaffer on his 60th birthday.* Some of them got their first chance in that pub. A few of the celebrants are, or have been, English dons – John Fuller, Simon ...”