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“... or indignant humour’. In 1978 Cecil Beaton attributes to the society philanthropist Lady Anne Tree ‘an oversize personality and character – rorty, Hogarthian and with exquisite understanding of character’, and in 2003 a writer in the Economist evokes a ‘Hogarthian throng of cheerful tradesmen and naughty ’prentice boys’. ‘March of the ...”

“... inertia prevailed. Now, with the politicians themselves running gagging down the corridors of power, the obstacles rapidly disappeared. The Thames Purification Bill was introduced on 15 July and swiftly passed into law on 2 August, the last day of the session. William Dyce’s ‘Pegwell Bay’ (1858) Thus 1858 was fated to be famous in British ...”

“... truth, whereas Chaucer, like Ovid, ‘suggests that when people believe in one truth, sovereign power and unchallengeable discourse … other people tend to get damaged, even killed’. Having seen the tyranny of the Visconti dynasty first-hand, he may have been appalled (as Boccaccio was) by Petrarch’s willing service to the lords of Milan. But he had ...”

“... gradually I fell out of love with him. I went on loving him, however.Danny Moynihan, the son of Anne Dunn, one of Lucian’s lovers, was at the Slade with me. He arranged a show for some of us at Acquavella Galleries in New York in 1981. The work was at the Moynihans’ house, waiting to be shipped to the US, when, according to Dunn, ‘Lucian came ...”

“... the process of European integration is now confronted with the potential emergence of a hegemonic power, with a widely asymmetrical capacity to affect all other member states. The third great change has followed from the end of Communism in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. The restoration of capitalism east of the Elbe has further transformed the ...”

“... Knights stresses that ideas of fiduciary public trust were first advanced by critics of royal power during the Civil War. These men talked of a public good: the ideal office-holder should be impartial, selfless and accountable; any corruption or venality was a ‘breach of trust’. They drew up a ‘black list’ of MPs who had accepted offices and ...”

“... animist tenderness in Hughes’s writing, a tenderness that plays against his celebration of feral power. It’s like the last line of a short early poem ‘Snowdrop’ – ‘Her pale head heavy as metal’ – where nature and human artifice come gently together.Inevitably, though, it is biographical interest that these letters stimulate. We catch Hughes’s ...”

“... those suspected of recusancy to swear loyalty to the sovereign, and to disavow papal claims to power as ‘impious and heretical’: ‘And I do further swear, that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure, as impious and heretical, this damnable doctrine and position, that princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the pope, may be deposed or ...”

“... that they overlook its obvious concomitants in keeping down the standard of wages and purchasing power, and the spread of desolation over their own countryside. Their eyes only seem to be fixed on overseas trade.There are those who argue that it was this depression – and the sense of betrayal it engendered in farmers between the wars – that led the ...”

“... are properly a function of medical ethics rather than law, it is the law which holds the ultimate power to determine where the territory of medical ethics ends and the realm of the insured risk begins. The difference in levels at which medical negligence can occur, as the book’s opening chapter explains, is of key relevance. Once an individual is qualified ...”

“... its reliance on the slightly shallow brilliance of simile as opposed to the deeper, more reflexive power of metaphor. You’re meant to be thrilled by it, but not to linger too long, for it’s leading you into a story, not trying to stop you in your tracks. In that respect, it is very like a lot of the best lines in current verse – lines that dazzle briefly ...”

“... Rediger settles on a nearby literary analogy. As he reminds François, they are in the house where Anne Desclos, Jean Paulhan’s lover, wrote The Story of O. For all its ‘ostentatious kitsch’, Rediger says, The Story of O captured ‘the astonishing and simple idea… that the summit of human happiness resides in the most absolute submission’. His ...”

“... came again, now changed with time, Which shocked me, but still beautiful. ‘You have usurped my power and name – Your work misjudged, these people pitiful.’ I shrugged. ‘So usurp it back again.’ Although a Dubliner, Quinn works in Prague, and the sequence from which ‘Ur-Aisling’ comes – ‘Days of the New Republic’ – refers as much to the ...”

“... all of it filtered through David’s anaesthetised gaze and precocious schoolboy prose. The power of The Neon Bible resides in its descriptions of the small town where David’s childhood is unspent. But, as the reader admires Toole’s writing, questions form. Was he really only 16 when he wrote it? Did he perhaps revise or wholly rewrite the text at a ...”

“... it, and tonight, returning from the opera, we are mortified to find we are too late for supper. Anne Vaughan, our organiser, braves the kitchen and eventually a waitress takes pity on us and gives us some bread and ham and a bit of dog-eared salad which we take upstairs in plastic bags. ‘You must be very hungry,’ says a man in the lift. ‘What country ...”