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“... in his time, and yet who see the truth of his writings just as much as the courtiers of Queen Elizabeth did.’Literary scholars have been readier than historians to explore how Britain’s 350-year connection with extra-European empire shaped and complicated the identities and patriotisms within it. Even now, imperial history is still sometimes pursued ...”

“... had abandoned all his old occupations, or so he claimed, in favour of a ‘new Profession’ as a cook. He would always regret the swagger of the Treatise: ‘The positive air,’ as he called it, ‘which prevails in that book, and which may be imputed to the ardour of youth, so much displeases me, that I have not the patience to review it.’ He liked to ...”

“... windy still almost warm. Between Rupert getting up and him fetching me a cup of tea I reread ‘Elizabeth at Rycote’, an essay in A.L. Rowse’s The English Spirit, published in 1944 and bought, I see from the flyleaf, when I was in Cork in 1963. Rowse figures in it, having walked out from Oxford to Rycote with Bruce McFarlane during the war. Rowse here ...”

“... night’s newspaper crumpled with a stick or two of kindling. When the fire settles down, she will cook breakfast; the fire will keep her suffocating company as she washes up afterwards. In a serge suit, one look at which would be enough to bring you out in prickly heat, Old Borden will perambulate the perspiring town, truffling for money like a pig until he ...”

“... to Ireland they had to buy their big house. There was no Bowen’s Court to write a history of, as Elizabeth Bowen did. They made up for this shortcoming with an unquestioned loyalty to the empire and a cult of the stiff upper lip. The two were inextricably entwined, as Keane acknowledged in an interview when Good Behaviour came out:Mother’s father governed ...”

“... like a man without a skin. Unswerving truth is all very well in exemplary radical fiction. In Elizabeth Inchbald’s Nature and Art the noble young Henry, brought up in uncivilised Africa, entertainingly floors his clerical uncle and pliant cousin by regularly subjecting their conversation to a Socratic dialectic. In real life, Mrs Inchbald’s triumphs ...”

“... only to be expected. Even a literary wife as talented as her husband, like the second Mrs Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, finds her work calibrated on the scale of accomplishment not achievement, and the sincerest recognition still hints at the escape from the washing-up or stolen hours while children sleep. Whether you call this condescension or ...”

“... Cockburn was born overseas, the son of Henry Cockburn, a senior diplomat in Beijing, and his wife, Elizabeth. Two years after his birth in 1904, he was sent back to Britain, soon followed by his parents: Henry had resigned on a complex matter of principle. They settled at Tring in Hertfordshire and Claud was sent to school at Berkhamstead. The headmaster ...”

“... metropolitan area and on the south coast.Every time I take the long escalator down to the Elizabeth Line, or contemplate the implications of our compulsive burrowing into the radiant future promised by developers, I wonder about the psychic damage being inflicted on London as a living organism. ‘Intercept, store and ultimately transfer’ is the ...”

“... had put it, became manifest in their behaviour. Warner was a serial homebody: an accomplished cook, gardener and seamstress. Ackland did most of the heavy lifting: ‘I lean more and more on her trousers,’ Warner declared. For the time being, at least, the discharge of libido flowed in a single direction only, although Warner was on one occasion ...”

“... forests with a retinue of 26 porters and hammock bearers, two personal attendants and a full-time cook. His cousin Barbara went too (she said she was 23; Tim Butcher, in Chasing the Devil, reports her age as 27), though Greene scarcely mentions her. Her account of the trip was published in 1938, under the title Land Benighted. It was soon out of print. In his ...”

“... mistress’. I am not sure whether this was better or worse than Campbell’s ultimatum to Robin Cook that he must choose between his wife and his mistress. In any event, Clark resigned soon afterwards, complaining that ‘news management’ had become ‘news invention’. Even the young Queen Elizabeth was moved to ...”

“... tried to coax informal revelations out of Roosevelt over lunch. He flirted with Ginger Rogers and Elizabeth Arden. He wrote The Gremlins (1943), about a pilot, for Walt Disney, but the film was never made. He slept with starlets – and then, in 1953, he married one. Patricia Neal, co-star with Ronald Reagan in The Hasty Heart and former lover of Gary ...”

“... appointment to the Ptolemies, captured by Pompey and sold as a slave at Rome: ‘he started as a cook, then became a sedan-bearer, and finally joined Augustus’ circle of friends.’ Apparently, Augustus told him to watch his mouth. None of Timagenes’ many books survives, but he may have influenced Trogus, who was epitomised by Justin, who does. At any ...”

“... woman who had been offered a low-paying but coveted position at the New York Review of Books by Elizabeth Hardwick. Her therapist told her she wouldn’t be able to afford therapy if she accepted the job, ‘and I would therefore wind up on the street, a drug-addicted prostitute.’ Terrified, she turned down the offer.But it was the warping of the ...”