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“... principles were more influential than his practice. Although his short memoir of his friend John Sterling is counted as a minor classic of biography, his much more elaborate life of Cromwell, not to say his interminable History of Frederick the Great, has never been shortlisted among the world’s greatest examples of the art. But Carlyle possessed one ...”

“... in Cookham High Street put up by his grandfather Julius. Pa was a music teacher, worshipper of Ruskin, read the Bible to the family. Ma took the children to the village Methodist chapel, something Stanley in the end found unsatisfying. ‘I have listened to a thousand sermons, and would like something to counterbalance this. I would like to read about St ...”

“... Gerard Manley Hopkins. This listlessness is most unfortunate in the dialogue. What is the use of Ruskin making an appearance to say, ‘All right, then, temporarily I will pay for a suitable room large enough to accommodate her needs,’ or Gabriel adding, ‘Perhaps John and I should talk it over. See if we can come up ...”

“... a highly intelligent wife who was a full intellectual helpmeet, and like even more of them (add Ruskin, Pater and George Eliot, for example) he was childless – to be exact, his only child died a week after birth. The sight of Mrs Grote in a turban is supposed to have provoked Sydney Smith to the comment that at last he understood the meaning of the word ...”

“... Grave’. It leads to a blunt stone plinth with a round boulder on top and a plaque commemorating John Flynn (1880-1951), a Presbyterian minister who was sent by his church to the Northern Territory in 1912 to investigate conditions in the bush. His report was grim, describing poor communications and scant healthcare. In 1928, with the pedal-powered radio ...”

“... but had no less of a raw deal than an adopted girl off the street would have done, although Ruskin became her aesthetic champion from outside, and may have helped to persuade Gabriel to marry her. The Rossetti ladies were not hostile, though certainly not helpful either; and when, after a cheerful dinner with her husband in Leicester Square, Lizzie was ...”

“... and how, may be difficult to determine. The Hetling trial made great play with this ambiguity. John Mortimer, for the defence, asked a collector who appeared as a prosecution witness, having bought several ‘Hetlings’, why he had bought them. Was it for investment and financial gain or simply because he thought they were beautiful? The collector replied ...”

“... responsibility for later antiquities. The National Trust, which had been founded by admirers of Ruskin and William Morris to preserve threatened areas of countryside, had, at first, no remit to take on buildings. With its ethos of inspired amateurism, however, this ‘dedicated group of happy-go-lucky enthusiasts’, as Lees-Milne called them, was more ...”

“... spent his career in dialogue with its symbols and became a Jehovah’s Witness; for Dickens, Ruskin tutted, ‘Christmas meant mistletoe and pudding – neither resurrection from the dead, nor rising of new stars, nor teaching of wise men, nor shepherds.’ Prince’s ‘Another Lonely Christmas’ (‘’Cause baby, you promised me/Baby you promised me ...”

“... John Betjeman was the voice of postwar Englishness: at best, humorous, quirky and enthusiastic about some of the oddest things; at worst, parochial and smug shading into bitter. How ironic, in view of later developments and the argument of Timothy Mowl’s book, that Nikolaus Pevsner’s first visit to England, in 1930, was to research a new topic: Englishness in art ...”

“... B. Priestley, G. Wilson Knight, George Steiner, Angus Wilson) have been booming the name of John Cowper Powys for many years, outraged that other big guns will not join the salute. In the first number of the Powys Review, in 1977, George Steiner blamed Dr Leavis for praising Theodore Francis Powys above ...”

“... lived at Kelmscott House and where in October of that year he died. It was Morris, along with Ruskin and occasionally Goethe, whose writings gave Muthesius the epigraphs for his book, and it was in Morris himself, as ‘an individual with the strength of genius swimming against the tide of his age’, that Muthesius thought he found the begetter of the ...”

“... on art, Burckhardt, Riegl, Wöllflin and Warburg. He also retained an unfashionable admiration for Ruskin and deeply appreciated the essays of Pater – in particular, ‘The School of Giorgione’, which deliberately disregarded art historical scholarship in this field. The change of direction meant abandoning the example and the training Berenson had ...”

“... chic (the ready-dressed blue and silver faux-fir). For the unsure, there are ‘treetorials’ at John Lewis or ‘Christmas design consultation’ for £250. They’ll even decorate your tree for you. Most companies are cleverer with their own displays now, and recognise the opportunity for spectacle. You don’t even need the tree – just a surprising ...”

“... to the Manchester United superstore, was to accompany her on a tour of the Deansgate branch of the John Rylands University Library. Mrs Rylands, the extraordinary founder of the collection, was particularly keen on Bibles, and among the many Biblical treasures is a tiny triangular fragment of the text of St John’s ...”