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“... betrayer of her country, but the innocent and warm-hearted victim of an evil spy-master, Stephen Ward, who passed himself off as a playboy but was in fact at the centre of an international espionage ring. In her salad days, Keeler was not a prostitute, not a popsie (a word whose absence from the world I’ve missed these past thirty-odd years), not a ...”

“... that civic-minded women usually tried hard to avoid. This at least was the view of Mrs Humphry Ward. Early in 1889, hearing that ‘that scoundrel Salisbury’ (as the positivist Frederic Harrison called him) was weighing the advantages of enfranchising a small slice of propertied (and presumably Conservative) women, ...”

“... It was bright and sunny, the wind rattling the window in the small consulting room off the ward. Dr Harris waved his arms on the other side of the desk, saying that there was nothing to worry about – rest, some pills, and everything would be fine. The hospital was in Surrey, on a hill. It had been founded as a private institution for the ...”

“... garment’ form the main interest of this erudite, entertaining and well-illustrated book. Robert Ward has made painstaking and profitable use of the vast mass of archival material in the Public Record Office (because of the Stuart kings’ involvement), the London Metropolitan Archives (which hold a vast amount of material from all the old water ...”

“... military establishment and the new government in Washington, a town presided over by another John/Jack the lad. Profumo’s go-getting reputation and unstuffy demeanour made him attractive to the men around JFK, who liked that he didn’t seem like a typical Brit, never mind a typical Tory. He was extremely sociable, and well suited to the work ...”

“... her ears. Eventually, she collapses and an ambulance brings Sinéad to the ominously capitalised Ward in the ominously capitalised Hospital. She’s on familiar turf: she was born there and it’s where she delivered her three sons with fairy-tale dispatch. It was also the site of many unpleasant physical examinations: her bowels, her ovarian cyst. Nine ...”

“... their language A-level when they see a voluble, monoglot French or German doctor coming down the ward. Perhaps that’s why the Government claims to be encouraging more children to take languages as far as GCSE: it’s cheaper than training doctors. The statistics that get screened in the course of television Test Matches grow more arcane by the ...”

“... The George Eliot entry does not mention her brother Isaac, Charles Bray, Charles Hennell or John Chapman. Lewes gets just eight words (‘a married man unable to divorce his wife’). Sartre similarly gets no more than a dismissive sentence in the de Beauvoir entry. Beauvoir’s book on her mother’s death is cited, but not Adieux, her farewell to ...”

“... a family circuit Closing like a wreath. Round Out till 4 o’clock dancing, they’re Back on the ward at half-seven from Sligo, Vigorously turning the sheets. I can’t get up no A double amputee fell Off a wheelchair and began to spin Until we could raise him. I can’t get up A cancer case, deep yellow, spoke of The discos at Bart’s where he’d been a ...”

“... this time in a more objectively historical context. Hamilton offers 22 case studies, from John Donne – the first properly biographed English author – to Philip Larkin of last month’s Observer fame. Hamilton could not, if he tried, write an unreadable book. Keepers of the Flame is that rarest of modern things, lit crit with laughs. Hamilton has ...”

“... a few unrighteous men (contrary to the deluge),’ Pope, who lost money himself, was to write. John Gay was ruined, and in a letter written weeks after prices crashed, explains that he can’t settle his book-buying bill ‘at a time when it is impractible to sell out of the Stocks in which my fortune is engag’d’. How Tonson must have chuckled. He ...”

“... history. Part of that history can be traced back to the first historian of London to be published. John Stow arranged his pioneering Survey on a topographical system, ward by ward, conducting the reader on a perambulation of the city, providing him with much historical, architectural and ...”

“... been here far longer than I have: how did people look at the prison without feeling dismay? David Ward and Gene Kassebaum have compiled an immense study of the prison in what they call the gangster years, from its foundation in 1933 to 1948.* Drawing on interviews with inmates and guards that the government gathered decades ago, they have reconstructed the ...”

“... his lover, short-lived wife and long-lived correspondent Heloise, niece or daughter and ward of Canon Fulbert of Notre Dame. Then we have the story, which, unlike weaker-minded and worse historians, Clanchy has no problem about distinguishing from the tales of fiction. It is a story in three acts, or three different stories if you like, joined ...”

“... J.J. Beegan in 1946. By the time they met, Adamson explained, Beegan ‘had been in a locked ward in the hospital for many years. He was incontinent and unable to speak clearly. He drew vigorously on the only paper he could find.’ Adamson, who was tasked with introducing art therapy to the hospital, brought Beegan to his studio and gave him an ...”