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“... Women are bitches.’ It was odd and ugly of J.R. Ackerley to put it like that, since both the sentence before this terse rancour and the one after it dote upon a bitch, his dog Queenie. Much-loved Joe Ackerley was not much-loving, but he did love his dog, loved her even more than he loathed his sister Nancy ...”

“... me to ‘drop in’. ‘Yes, of course you are,’ he said. The note had been prompted by Nancy Ackerley, a friend of mine and the sister of Forster’s great friend J.R. Ackerley, who had written introducing me and hoping we would meet. I had duly knocked on his door but there had been no reply. He examined the books I ...”

“... Khajaraho to study erotic carvings. It was at Chhatarpur that, on Forster’s recommendation, J.R. Ackerley had entered the service of the decadent maharajah whom he mercilessly depicted in Hindoo Holiday, the name Chhatarpur being changed, by no means unrecognisably, to Chhokrapur. Chhatarpur was visited not only by the latest literary Trevelyan but by ...”

“... urge the young not to follow. It is, once one begins, all too easy. Somebody mentioned me to J.R. Ackerley at the Listener, and so was born the journalist who has wasted so much of my time.This strikes that note of mock sorrow Frank cultivated when setting aside various episodes in his life, while at the same time not altogether disguising the pride he ...”

“... Stephen Spender on the vexed issue of a Rilke translation, suggested that he do it alone. To J.R. Ackerley, as literary editor of the Listener trapped in the BBC machine, he sends comments on that organisation which come from the other side but remind one of those we have been hearing lately from Lord Wyatt and others (‘reactionary and politically and ...”

“... the Sunday he died, we discussed the anthology (‘They’ll never do it,’ Thom said) and J.R. Ackerley, the last among the scores of writers I’d never have found had it not been for Thom. ‘His writing is close in style to Isherwood’s,’ I said to Thom. ‘Who was influenced by whom?’ ‘Oh, Ackerley by ...”

“... of compatriots, of both genders and varying sexual tastes, most of them known writers such as J.R. Ackerley, Ivy Compton-Burnett, L.P. Hartley. They were nearly all middle-class, by birth or advancement, and middle-aged, and as by now they are nearly all dead as well, the series of spirited portraits which forms much of the later part of King’s book has an ...”

“... to set up the world of school in a waste land of permissiveness and democratic vulgarity. J.R. Ackerley’s world was in its own way not so different. Peter Parker has already written a searching book, The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public School Ethos, and his long and thorough account of Ackerley’s career is even ...”

“... the devoted Eric Oliver. His first successful step in writing was promoted partly by reading J.R. Ackerley’s Hindoo Holiday, the work of another author who could only ever write about himself. I have seen a comparison made between the temperaments of these two, but this seems quite wrong. Ackerley was indeed a ...”

“... are more common than mum memoirs, or were until recently. Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son and J.R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself are the progenitors, and, as their titles suggest, the genre requires two protagonists, biographer co-starring with biographee. In the interests of plot and character, it helps to have a dad who was a bit (or more than a bit) of ...”

“... to tackle the deeper aspects of our relationship with dogs. I once wrote an introduction to J.R. Ackerley’s My Dog Tulip, and purposely left out the author’s spiritual difficulties because to discuss them seemed trendy, and I wanted to honour Ackerley’s choice of subject-matter, which was Tulip. But if ...”

“... intimate diary and, most important, with the policeman Bob Buckingham, whom he met in 1930 at J.R. Ackerley’s Hammersmith flat. He notes without dissent Edward Carpenter’s explanation of ‘why I like the Lower Classes. They are not self conscious. I am and therefore need them.’ When things get going with Bob, Forster is able to write: ‘I am happier ...”

“... interest Her Majesty it reminded Norman of something he had read that could fit the bill, J.R. Ackerley’s novel My Dog Tulip. Mr Hutchings was dubious, pointing out that it was gay. ‘Is it?’ said Norman innocently. ‘I didn’t realise that. She’ll think it’s just about the dog.’ He took the books up to the Queen’s floor and having been told ...”