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“... and therefore of the world, must be seen to have weight. Even if a writer has been hired for his light touch, he will find the editor collaborating with him lest due gravity be compromised. The heavy contributor will be encouraged to grow heavier still, by putting down footnotes as a baobab tree puts down roots. At its most extreme the effect is of a learned ...”

“... Mellor was moved sideways and replaced by William Waldegrave, who offers a merciful moment of light relief in this bleak story. When Arafat was staying in London, Waldegrave called on him. Picking up an embroidered cushion, he said how handsome it was, and looked forward ‘to the day when I can walk down a Palestinian street and buy Palestinian goods as ...”

“... The Power and the Glory, but largely consist of forgotten country-house comedies, French classics, light farces, anodyne musical comedies and the work of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan (though, unlike today, there were no musical revivals, popstar tributes or shows based on films). In an era when the point of plays was to provide vehicles for star actors to ...”

“... ago. There is a certain amount of unjustly neglected travel writing, such as the work of the late Alan Booth. But Japan has never attracted the attention of a Chatwin or a Naipaul, let alone fostered a Kipling, a Somerset Maugham, a Hemingway or a Paul Bowles. No one has had a greater yearning or been better qualified to fill this gap than Donald ...”

“... the phrase comes from Henry James – and not just the imagination, we might add. In this light, Trilling then says, we may feel that Tolstoy ‘gives us, after all, not reality itself but a sort of idyll of reality’. This is very intriguing, and a long way – too far, probably – from the old claim made by Babel and so many others. It was much in ...”

“... a word by Ayn Rand, and though I know she is an object of veneration in some surprising places (Alan Greenspan, for instance, is a fan), the little bits I have picked up always sounded a bit bonkers to me.* So this seemed a good test of Wikipedia’s much vaunted NPOV (neutral point of view): I would look her up on Wales and Sanger’s encyclopedia to find ...”

“... love the Caledonian forest of Ballochbuie, the open invitation of its understorey, the play of light and shadow on the carpet of blaeberry and heather. Some of these Scots pines are older than the House of Windsor, older than the Acts of Union, older even than the House of Hanover. Still, it takes an effort to see beyond the royal presence. There are ...”

“... by Chardin, its inhabitants entranced and absorbed among everyday objects, blocks of colour and light overlaid with a sober, reverential geometry. Sardou was horrified. ‘Which Robespierre had she known?’ He proceeded to demolish her memories. Silly woman! Sentiment was blocking her access to her own history.It is possible – if fiction is your business ...”

“... Hill himself spoke of ‘the constant presence of humour throughout my poetry, and even a light-heartedness which I think many critics have either wilfully neglected to notice or innocently overlooked’. The only disappointment when his immense collected poems Broken Hierarchies appeared in 2013 was Hill’s decision not to reprint most of the notes ...”

“... a corrosively individualist conception of life. Three recent semi-official publications throw some light on the relation between this conception and the reality of contemporary British society. In January 2009 the government announced the creation of a Panel on Fair Access to the Professions, chaired by Alan Milburn, a ...”

“... was an explanation – alcoholism, misogyny, sublimated attraction – even if it only came to light decades after the fact.There was another reason Streisand wasn’t enjoying her first years in LA: her marriage was falling apart. Gould was jealous of her success and addicted to gambling. Both had affairs. ‘The parallels to Fanny Brice and Nicky ...”

“... Kidnapped was really our favourite, but we couldn’t call our daughter David, or name her after Alan Breck. She’d have to be named for the sequel.Like all my contemporaries, in those first years when the contraceptive pill was widely available, I only half believed I could coerce my body, and suspected that it might have some filthy tricks in store; but ...”

“... melodious cooing and flutter of wings on the lawn.’ At the front entrance Stevenson placed a ‘light’ in a model of the Skerryvore lighthouse, and he put a ship’s bell in the garden. (The original lighthouse was built by his uncle Alan, 12 miles south-west of Tiree.) Fanny put benches here and there, so that ...”

“... he argues, philosophy becomes a kind of narrative activity, rehearsing its own pre-history in the light of its present-day interests and concerns. In fact, this is just what philosophers have always done – constructed some kind of legitimating narrative by which to explain their position – though the storytelling is usually presumed to have an end when it ...”

“... era was cold and dark and bleak, but there was a touch of pink in the east and a sense of the light slowly but steadily strengthening. In 1945, more than 70 per cent of the population was working-class, employed either as rural labourers or industrial workers. Over the next decade, their story would be one of growing prosperity and wellbeing, of widening ...”