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“... The first meaning of ‘band’ given in the Oxford English Dictionary is ‘That with or by which a person or thing is bound’. This seems appropriate for the word’s musical connotations as well as its more literal sense. Anyone with practical experience in the jazz, rock or folk music worlds will know that bands are, first and foremost, bindings together of personalities, undertaken in the hope of producing something greater than the mere sum of the individuals ...”

“... Howard Jacobson’s first novel, Coming from Behind, was published last year, and made one think that a new exponent of the comic academic narrative had arrived. Jacobson’s hero, Sefton Goldberg, Jewish and highly suspicious of his Gentile surroundings, is aggressive towards the literature he’s supposed to be teaching, to a degree that makes Leavis seem like a nice auntie ...”

“... My idea of what a novelist should do is an old-fashioned one,’ says a character in the title story in Isabel Colegate’s collection A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory. ‘I think that each work should be a step forward from the last, that he should never repeat himself, that he should only produce a book when he is ready to add to his own knowledge – why write down what one knows already? – he should address himself to his generation, applying himself with pure heart and humble mind to their legitimate question What Then Must We Do ...”

“... fervent for being sometimes insecure, and for not being entirely separated from sexual feeling. Humphrey Carpenter, who – for all the occasional lapse of tone or judgment – has written a first-rate book about Kingsley and the other children’s authors of the original ‘Golden Age’ (the 1860s to 1920s), mentions a childhood friend accidentally ...”

“... been in his midforties before people took to preserving what he had addressed to them. Even so, Humphrey Carpenter has found that ‘an immense number’ of letters survive. In projecting the present selection, he realised that ‘an enormous quantity of material would have to be omitted’ and that ‘only passages of particular interest could be ...”

“... Humphrey Carpenter is a practised biographer; he can do groups as well as single persons, but he admits that this group set him a new problem, which was that he remained throughout unsure whether it really existed. The Movement (a rather localised, mostly Oxford affair) and the Angry Young Men (more London, more of the theatre) were certainly the inventions of journalists, but they took on a kind of reality when the public was induced to view the young men in terms of those inventions, and also when the writers concerned noticed that the mirror of gossip did, however distortedly, reflect them ...”

“... on the piano. Eventually, his mother came and took him away. The effect of this story, which Carpenter appears to have included simply for its strangeness, is suddenly to make us aware of how immersed we have become in the enclosed universe of the great man’s life. Biographies often give the impression that the world revolves around their subject. A ...”

“... or not belonging, important for Bloomsbury or for the Brideshead Generation written about by Humphrey Carpenter, is less significant than the initial and basic instinct to opt out, or the passionate wish to opt in. As a template and exemplar of getting on in the world, school can either be a negative experience or one so positive that it determines ...”

“... I started writing the play I made much use of the biographies of both Auden and Britten written by Humphrey Carpenter and both models of their kind. Indeed I was consulting his books so much that eventually Carpenter found his way into the play. His widow, Mari Prichard, was more than helpful over this, though feeling ...”

“... to determine the tone of the presentation, the rhythm and contrasts of each evening’s schedule? Humphrey Carpenter’s detailed account suggests that the mandarins of the mid-Forties got the Third Programme right straight off. The BBC’s Director-General, William Haley, credited himself with having created the network by two decisions. Programmes ...”

“... also charged – by strong force fields of shame and prohibition. In his biography of Britten, Humphrey Carpenter darkened counsel with a little innuendo and shadow; attractively, Kildea and Powell are straightforward and easy about Britten’s boys. Britten certainly fell in love with Piers Dunkerley, Bobby Rothman, David Spenser and David Hemmings ...”

“... market, more likely to last. Moreover the poet will probably start with the handicap of being dead.Humphrey Carpenter’s excellent life of Auden has a nice turn of phrase in recounting the moment when Stephen Spender, arrived in an Oxford of the later Twenties which was pervaded by the legend of Auden, at last met his fellow undergraduate and ‘found ...”

“... also unforthcoming about sexual matters, about the nature of Auden’s feeling for Britten (which Humphrey Carpenter has now discussed) and the part that might have played in Britten’s intimidation by Auden – already established by a sense of intellectual inferiority and lack of experience. Auden was catalytically inspiring, but embodied forces ...”

“... without judging broadly who he thought he was or what he thought he was doing. Here Mr Carpenter rushes in where even an angel might tread with some trepidation. (The tone for example, of the title of Chapter Five, ‘Who did he think he was?’, is less than prudent, and its imprudence is far from being repaired by the content of the chapter ...”

“... Pound will make it impossible to approach his work on such terms any longer. Neither Casillo nor Carpenter take one into a new way of reading poetry. But both have produced important books, and Casillo’s in particular will have a major impact on Pound studies. From a critical point of view, Carpenter’s approach to ...”