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“... since before the First World War. The epithet ‘triumphant’ in the title of the new volume of John Richardson’s magnum opus has a brash, swaggering ring: fittingly so. This is the tale of an extremely rich and famous man who came pretty near to doing whatever he wanted. The Picasso of the 1920s was physically strong and socially supple: he could charm ...”

“... He was voicing the received scholarly opinion of his time, mediated to him through the writings of John Burnet and F.M. Cornford, Russell’s one-time colleague at Trinity College, Cambridge. And that scholarly opinion was itself the codification, with properly footnoted sources, of a millennia-long tradition about Pythagoras and mathematics.What happened ...”

“... never spoken to anyone, so I go back to the door where, as soon as I open it, the caller gets his foot in the door (literally). Bridget, who’s downstairs, now comes up and at the sight of a third party he takes fright, retreating to a white van waiting opposite with its engine running which drives off so quickly I fail to get the number. Thinking about it ...”

“... lamb. The absence of a lamb must have seemed ominous to the servants, who remained at the foot of the mountain. Only the son dared break the silence, asking what it was they were to sacrifice. As they climbed, the man answered his question ambiguously. God, he said, will see to it. His phrase might be interpreted to mean ‘provide’, but also ...”

“... recollections. Today Samuel is best known for his work on popular memory and for History Workshop. John Merrick’s new selection of his essays aims to rectify that: it brings together a sample of Samuel’s historical studies, several of which are still thrilling to read, and most of which would have been difficult to get hold of without access to a good ...”

“... in Rochdale, the politics of place are as central here as party politics.I met Gavin Grimshaw, six foot four, lean and sunburned in a Lonsdale boxing vest, in the simply furnished two-storey terraced house in Bury where he currently lives. The door opens straight onto the narrow pavement; part of the street is the original red brick, part pebble dashed. We sat ...”

“... because of her interest in folklore and her knowledge of the area around Coole and its people. ‘John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought/All that we did, all that we said or sang/Must come from contact with the soil.’ Much of Yeats’s work on Irish folklore was, as Foster points out, a collaboration with Lady Gregory.Lady Gregory also wrote ...”

“... 1991, will underestimate the hardiness and courage of David Livingstone, who traversed, on foot, thousands of miles of bush, mountain and swamp, fearsome to behold even from the air. But Livingstone’s country had not been unknown to the Portuguese, established on both east and west coast for centuries. The term ‘explorer’ really needs to be ...”

“... the LRB) available to run dope on the ferry to Ireland. Butties from Wales, the Tafia, to act as foot soldiers in an increasingly complex operation. A first wife whose family had money. ‘My parents will rent me a flat and buy me a car ... and if you need to borrow a couple of hundred pounds to set up a business, I couldn’t think of a better investment to ...”

“... back, cow-eyed and alabaster-browed. The actual text is 1079 tiny-printed pages long. ‘Who is John Galt?’ the novel begins: the question is rhetorical, an expression of despair. The setting is, loosely, America in the 1940s – Washington, Wisconsin, Mexico are mentioned, as are diners, bums, hamburgers, negligees – but film-set-thin and vague and ...”

“... and old-fashioned time indicators such as ‘presently’ (lifted, according to his friend John Spurling, from Richard Hughes). And he renders his characters’ inner voices oddly, sometimes putting thoughts in quotation marks, sometimes using free indirect style and sometimes forgetting which of the two he’s doing. From time to time this makes ...”

“... I looked fat, dull and unmanly. The achievements of others, particularly those of my older brother John, stood in for anything that I might achieve myself, and afterwards a series of distinguished men were to step into John’s shoes. I acquired a spectacular ability to not see, identify or shrewdly evaluate people or ...”

“... very soon, I lose the markers by which I have navigated, the beacons by which I know myself. Like John Clare leaving the tight circle of experience around the village of Helpston (then in Northamptonshire), I step out of my knowledge, to the tottering edge of an abyss known as ‘the future’ or ‘the human contract’. Mortality. Of place and ...”

“... for class insecurity. This underdog cockiness persisted for decades, serving as the driver of John Travolta’s sidewalk strut in 1977’s Saturday Night Fever, where disco prince Tony Manero eventually tires of Bay Ridge Brooklyn and his mooky friends as the magic spires of Manhattan beckon. A product of the jukebox era, Podhoretz belonged to an older ...”

“... sight of fertile land, making generalisations about peasant life difficult. Buñuel’s biographer John Baxter writes about Las Hurdes: ‘The lowlands, Las Hurdes Bajas, were lush and prosperous, but the flinty uplands behind them, Las Hurdes Altas, were among the most deprived areas in Spain. The peasants … lived in medieval conditions, ravaged by ...”