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“... The patron saints​ of tailoring, it seems, include Homobonus, who ‘all week long cut garments that were miraculously assembled’ every Sunday while he was at Mass, and Bartholomew, a victim of flaying, who ‘carried his skin draped over his arm’ rather as if returning with a suit from the cleaners. Whether either of them would be happy to retain his patronage of the scissor-men after leafing through Farid Chenoune’s heavyweight dossier – in which the dandy and the incroyable give way to the quiet gentleman and the dégagé sportsman, only to be followed by a collapse into androgyny, street-wise dumb insolence and ‘a syncopated disestablishmen-tarianism’ – is problematical ...”

“... choice. That fake seam drawn down the back of the leg was largely a newspaper stunt. ‘It is easy to allow this bizarre piece of social history to get out of hand,’ warns the author: throughout the war stockings were usually obtainable, in limited quantities. But an equally bizarre phenomenon was to be seen at the war’s end, with women in queues up ...”

“... It calls for a certain robustness of spirit to embark on an escapade which, with ill luck, could create six widows and 27 orphans. Such robustness was possessed by Mademoiselle Henriette d’Angeville, the first lady (repeat, lady) to climb Mont Blanc. She claims to have weighed the human odds beforehand, but it is hard to picture her with her six guides, on that bright September morning in 1838, ticking off the potential casualties on her fingers and then, in the face of tout Chamonix, boldly crying: ‘Excelsior!’ Henriette d’Angeville, château-reared and in good physical shape, was then 44 ...”

“... many a later period momentous events went unnoticed in its pages and a social conscience was not easy to detect in the weekly output of ‘subsistence journalism’ (Altick’s phrase). By contrast, the 1840s were rich in significant events – from the repeal of the Corn Laws to revolution in France, from the Irish famine to the railway shares mania. It was ...”

“... Will Self would have us believe that a volume of Saki’s stories, chosen from eight miles of second-hand books in a New York store, saved his life. That, he says in his introduction to this collection, should not be confused with changing his life. Faced with a 22-city promotional tour of America for one of his books (‘Not, you might venture, a deathly predicament in and of itself – but how wrong you are’), he was able to set against the ‘terrifying rootlessness’ of the tour the ‘triumphantly rooted character’ of Saki’s stories ...”

“... rivals to copy. The drum of Empire could not be banged deafeningly, though in the event the East India Company appeared as the centre of an Imperial showplace and the Koh-i-noor diamond, here described as ‘infamous’, went on unapologetic display. Much courting of Northern manufacturers and provincial mayors was necessary before the project achieved ...”

“... justice was being achieved, or so the offender might argue. Frauds against the state were all too easy. What was apparently known as the ‘Bomb Lark’ involved making false claims for property supposedly lost by enemy action. The ‘Billeting Lark’ consisted of variations on the evacuee racket perfected by Basil Seal in Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More ...”

“... to icy winds. Seemingly his parishioners at Skillington did not grudge him his long absences (what else were curates for?) and after his death they installed stained-glass windows in his honour. Stephen called him ‘as simple and noble a character as ever carried out the principles of muscular Christianity without talking its cant’. Mountaineering parsons ...”

“... their old, better-fitting and beribboned uniforms, a problem that must have caused unrest in the East Sussex company that recruited six former generals. A scene in which Captain Mainwaring and his shambling sergeant were confronted by a row of Blimp-like senior officers in breeches, high boots, spurs and monocles would have been judged over the top even in ...”

“... unsettling kiss. Here we seem to have entered Hilaire Belloc territory: The Devil, having nothing else to do, Went off to tempt My Lady Poltagrue. My Lady, tempted by a private whim, To his extreme annoyance, tempted him. All too soon, My Lady Sybil sneaks from the marriage bed to throw herself at the feet of the Devil ... Cut, and fast forward to her ...”

“... a single day, we are told, their West German office gave away 750,000 copies of romantic novels to East German women. These escapers, it was assumed, now needed all the escapism they could get. In the benighted East their appetite for fantasy-fodder might – or might not – have been fed by titles like Daughter of the ...”

“... Speaking as a true scholar, she said: ‘Isn’t it fun when you can quote from something no one else has access to?’ Both women had been married to savants, sharing each other’s honeymoons, but the husbands had died after a brief span (‘I call this jolly sinister – where is Poirot?’ says Eric Newby, naughtily, in a foreword). Until Sinai ...”

“... not wholly unjustified. The unspoken message seemed to be: cash in on your memoirs, like everyone else. Perhaps it was good that for once Monty should be the victim of ingratitude. ‘Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer,’ runs the saying, but Monty was more like a chimney on fire. In the post-war confusion his ego expanded terrifyingly. Through ...”

“... After his first novel was published, Somerset Maugham was a frequent guest at Holmhurst, in Sussex, of that indiscreet memoirist, Augustus Hare, then in his sixties. At morning worship, with the servants, Maugham noticed that the wording of the prayers was unfamiliar. ‘I’ve crossed out all the passages in glorification of God,’ explained Hare ...”

“... he was not allowed to speak the English he was taught at school. Like just about everyone else of his generation he claimed to have read comics – in his case, the Wizard – with the aid of a torch under the bedclothes. He also boasted of having read the massed works of Scott, presumably not under the bedclothes, by the age of ten. His father had a ...”