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“... of Nature where it was common.’ And with water, much labour is involved. In the 12th century, as Emma Jones writes in her patchy history of London’s water, William Fitzstephen wrote of ‘special wels in the Suburbs’ where the water was ‘sweete, wholesome and cleare’. Water no longer has to be sweet by law, but it does have to be ...”

“... as it is, World’s Fair is the best thing of Doctorow’s I’ve read. Boiled down, Emma Tennant’s Adventures of Robina goes like this. The red-haired and beautiful heroine belongs to a rich family, but is herself possessed only of a measly £25,000 which has been locked up in a trust fund. Robina’s parents have mysteriously decamped, and ...”

“... elicited from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and Henry IV Part One, Keats’s Odes and Tom Jones, Emma and Tess. It is still happening, even after we have got historians to stop drilling them in the battles we won, and when geographers no longer offer them maps in which the Empire is coloured red. Penguin ...”

“... well as something about the cynicism of corporate merchandising). Jemima Weiss, the narrator of Emma Richler’s first novel, is as a nine-year-old devoted to Action Man. With each purchase of an item from the Action Man directory, you were awarded stars in proportion to its value . . . When you had collected 21 stars you won a free Action Man . . . I ...”

“... less obvious) sense, however, Flaubert couldn’t be more right: what makes his heroine Emma Bovary rather than Delphine Delamare, c’est lui. Writers must get tired of answering crass questions – and not only writers. Bob Dylan, when asked by a journalist what his songs were ‘about’, said: ‘Some of my songs are about four minutes, some are ...”

“... wrote in the Poetics, ‘to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun.’ Fielding in Tom Jones argued that writers weren’t ‘obliged to keep even pace with time’, but would do well to steer clear of ‘monkish dullness’ and focus on ‘matters of consequence’ so as not to ‘resemble a newspaper, which consists of just the same number of ...”

“... We meet Sir Norman kissing little Alex, who is Nan’s girl, and Sarah says: ‘Say hello to Aunt Emma, Alex.’ Emma tells little Alex she is going to stay at Nayles, ‘a marvellous house with an old family name’, where Emma used to stay when she was a little girl ‘because mummy and ...”

“... first the Pre-Raphaelites were able to rouse both anger and admiration; a Soho sex shop with Burne-Jones posters as its sole window decoration suggests that whatever it was about their work that made people uneasy still tells. Pre-Raphaelite pictures can be memorable even when they are unlikeable: indeed, are sometimes most memorable when most ...”

“... Ghent and in the Antwerp Academy. Unlike William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or Edward Burne-Jones, Brown profited from a broad and thorough education in the business of painting. Later, his art became a passion and a vocation. But it never ceased to be a job from which a living had somehow to be wrung. Adult cares came early. His devoted mother and ...”

“... to ‘Umbria’), and now protected from contagion by the new emergency measures. My wife, Emma, and I both mostly work from home anyway; the children have each other for company when they want, and separate bedrooms when they don’t. We live on the edge of town – and in Orvieto, that is literally an edge, as the town isn’t merely on a ...”

“... Edward Jones – the Burne came later – was born in Birmingham to a mother who died giving birth to him and a father who eked out a living as a frame-maker, although art, his son reported, ‘was always a great bewilderment to him’. The only person who seems to have recognised the boy’s talent – a neighbour who bought pictures to rework – had the dubious merit of having once painted stormy waves over a calm harbour scene by Turner ...”

“... much to shape British social history over the last four decades: Ross McKibbin, Gareth Stedman Jones and Patrick Joyce. I should say before I go any further that I too am a modern British historian: this is my subject and my tribe. I’ve met the dedicatees, most of the editors and a majority of the contributors to these volumes; a few are good ...”

“... home Cosmopolitan with a long extract, prettily illustrated, and an astounding comment from Emma Dally: ‘Although it is not a “women’s novel”, the strength of the female characters is quite astounding.’ Isabel Allende herself on television has described these figments as ‘strong women who are somehow opposite to violence and torture, all ...”

“... had one son, killed in the British Army, and two daughters, Tom’s Aunt Clara and his mother, Emma. The flighty Emma had fallen for a member of the catering staff, while cruising on a passenger boat, and this long-lost man was Tom’s father. He was Jewish, too. This discovery brightens Tom up. He now knows he is ...”

“... John Vavassour de Quentin Jones, Belloc tells us in his Cautionary Tales, Was very fond of throwing stones At Horses, People, Passing Trains But specially at Window-panes. Like many of the Upper Class, He liked the sound of Broken Glass. To this last line is appended the footnote: A line I stole with subtle daring From Wing-Commander Maurice Baring ...”