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“... the preoccupation of his follow-up, Young Mungo, as shown by the new novel’s dedication: ‘For Alexander and all the gentle sons of Glasgow’. The worlds of the books are continuous – deprived Glasgow and its environs in the Thatcher years and after – but the characters are not, even if someone who is clearly Shuggie puts in a cameo appearance, asking ...”

“... his desire to pose as the champion of blue-collar workers and his obsessive interest in the Dow Jones index, which doesn’t react well to his economic nationalism. While Trumpian rhetoric emphasises the dignity of labour, even economists inclined to favour protectionism have struggled to find any substantial group of American workers that has benefited ...”

“... for Lord Hay’s Masque – almost certainly devised by the pre-eminent artist of the genre, Inigo Jones – followed in this tradition: its action opened on a magnificent prospect of woodland, with a Bower of Flora, a House of Night and Diana’s Tree of Chastity, in front of which danced nine 15-foot golden trees. At the end of the dance, each tree opened to ...”

“... brown brogue boots. He was 47 but looked about 29. There was something studied about him – the Alexander McQueen scarf, the lawyerly punctilio – and I’d never met anyone who spoke so easily about such large sums of money. When I asked him the point of the whole exercise he said it was simple: ‘Buy in, sell out, make some zeroes.’ MacGregor ...”

“... country lad, a Quaker from County Durham (‘Why, aye!’). He’s Enlightenment Man in his Tom Jones aspect, a bright, good-natured extrovert who wags his tail at all that interests him, like a friendly dog. Mason, on the other hand, is Enlightenment Man in his sombre, ‘Gothickal’ aspect. He is haunted by the ghost of his dead wife, Rebekah. He dreams ...”

“... University of Sussex in 1986. But she would like us, she said, to see Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander if we could, and to read ‘The Immortal Story’ by Isak Dinesen, ‘whom I have since discovered has become rather trrrendy’ (a film had just been made of Out of Africa, the memoir Dinesen wrote under her real name, Karen Blixen, starring Robert ...”

“... his muse for Ireland now’! And an article should be written comparing Wilson with Tsar Alexander I at the Congress of Vienna. All this was very unrealistic, and illusions were quickly shattered. In the event, Ireland’s first representatives in Paris were Sean T. O’Kelly and George Gavan Duffy. O’Kelly, who had been a member of Dublin ...”

“... to teach me to keep quiet. One’s legs often got felt up as a child. Dad’s old headmaster, Mr Alexander, used to give us lessons in algebra and he was a great stroker and clutcher, though only of the legs and not the parts appertaining. Vicars did it too, without seeming to want to take it further. It was something I came to expect, and just another of ...”

“... Fitzpatrick, Peter Geoghegan, Jeremy Harding, Owen Hatherley, Abby Innes, Mimi Jiang, Thomas Jones, Laleh Khalili, Jackson Lears, Donald MacKenzie, Thomas Meaney, James Meek, Pankaj Mishra, Azadeh Moaveni, Jan-Werner Müller, Vadim Nikitin, Jacqueline Rose, Jeremy Smith, Daniel Soar, Olena Stiazhkina, Vera Tolz, Daniel Trilling Sofia ...”

“... Earl of Middlesex; Sir Henry Goodyer, the patron of the poet Drayton; and the architect Inigo Jones. The vein is one of mock-commendation, but the sheer bulk of the endorsements gives the publication the buzz of a literary event. In the autumn of 1611, Coryate was guest of honour at a gathering at the Mitre Tavern in Fleet Street. This ‘Convivium ...”

“... had tripped over one of Caroline’s dolls and broken his neck in the White House nursery’ – Alexander Cockburn, the Nation, 6 January 1992. The third argument is micro-historical. It punctures holes in the details, brings up contradictory testimony, offers alternative hypotheses. It tends to trail off into indeterminacy: we’ll never know who did ...”

“... writer’, and he cut some contributions by more than half. One enemy he certainly made was Alexander Balloch Grosart DD, who was invited to contribute several entries for the first volumes, principally on 17th-century divines. As early as October 1883, Stephen was complaining that he had ‘had my usual letter of abuse from that old fool ...”

“... the recording of ‘Menelik (The Lion of Judah)’, by an eight-man group led by Rex Stewart, the Alexander Calder of the cornet, whose uninhibited behaviour as man and musician had earned him the nickname ‘Boy’. ‘Boy Meets Horn’ (1938), with its witty half-valving, was Stewart’s most famous solo feature with Ellington. ‘Menelik (The Lion of ...”

“... her remotely right. They included Chris Patten, John Patten, William Waldegrave and Tristan Garel-Jones, and were soon to be joined by John Major. In the pamphlet they used as an epigraph a line from Macmillan: ‘We have at least the most important thing of all at the head of our government, a prime minister of courage, who I hope will not be led away from ...”

“... Chile, still less the West’s strategic obsession with the Soviet Gulag and the reminiscences of Alexander Solzhenitsyn: Hassan, after all, was one of ours. And although this dark period of Moroccan history is thought to have ended thirty years ago, it’s far from clear that Mohammed VI, the present king, is the new broom he was thought to be when he ...”