“... with such a sum unassisted. But there is, apparently, every likelihood that the HLF – rolling in cash – will pitch in. According to newspaper reports, Murray is prepared to lower the price (to £33.2m) for their purchaser of first choice. According to the same reports, the HLF is likely, at least, to offer a ‘challenge’ 50 per cent, if the rest can be ...”

“... the immediate success of the Yellow Book, and of his story in its pages, James told his brother William: ‘I hate too much the horrid aspect and company of the whole publication’ (this didn’t stop him from contributing three more pieces to the magazine).The Yellow Book was a short-lived venture, folding in 1897 after thirteen quarterly issues, but it ...”

“... on the move. In Egypt the Sultan of Turkey, sensing a coolness between them, made Clayton a cash offer for his red-headed wife; later, an American millionaire proposed to pay off all Clayton’s debts as the price of taking her off his hands. Plots ready-made for fiction abounded. Elinor, having twice been told by Frenchmen that she was a tigresse, was ...”

“... attractively collectable format as a celebration of Hay’s native place – Tarbert, Loch Fyne. William McIlvanney, an accomplished novelist, is another Scottish writer who has a strong sense of where he comes from. He wants to reveal in his poems ‘the streets outside where Scotland really lives’. Unfortunately, though, McIlvanney can’t spot a ...”

“... now look like straws in the wind. In late November 2010 the English FA sent David Cameron, Prince William and David Beckham to Fifa headquarters in Zurich to lobby on its behalf before the vote for the right to host the 2018 World Cup. Two old Etonians and an alumnus of Chingford County High School: the sight of these three men larking about in their ...”

“... and development go in for grand plans and sweeping reforms. In The White Man’s Burden, William Easterly, for 16 years an economist at the World Bank, extols the virtues of thinking small when trying to help the poor. He argues that the urge to plan a country’s path to prosperity, without carefully considering the needs of those for whom you’re ...”

“... to the point where the world’s biggest titles – Halo 3, for example – reliably bring in more cash than most blockbuster movies. In small bedrooms throughout the Western world, boys in woolly hats and Nike trainers are currently tackling the most intractable problems of the day, and it seems their arsenals are unlimited and their thumbs tireless. Boys ...”

“... that he seems to have defined in contrast to science fiction, on the one hand, and the work of William Burroughs, on the other. There are several (scornful) references in this volume to the likes of Kingsley Amis and C.P. Snow, but only a single passing mention of Beckett (who had his own concept of inner space), and nothing at all about contemporaries ...”

“... to be ‘maiden ladies and foreigners with long hair, and educated Englishmen did not sing’. Sir William Henry Hadow, a leading educational reformer after the First World War, remembered the schooling he had received in the 1870s by noting that music had beenthe reluctant substitute for cricket, all the more bitter because it carried the suspicion of an ...”

“... Mitford’s other books and papers at her death before making their way to an obscure poet called William Cox Bennett. They surfaced again only when Bennett invited a young book collector to his lodgings in Camberwell for buttered toast and sausages. As the plates were cleared away and the contents of Mitford’s parcel were emptied out onto the table, the ...”

“... than close friends. Holroyd gives a fine account of his relationship with the amiable Ibsenite William Archer. Shaw, working as an art critic, would go with Archer to the shows. ‘He didn’t know much about painting then,’ said Archer, ‘but he thought he did, and that was the main point.’ It was the same, perhaps, with women He devoted some of his ...”

“... the atom bomb and then the H-bomb, because ministers were easily persuaded by the atomic scientist William Penney that ‘the discriminative test for a first-class power is whether it has made an atomic bomb.’ In his afterthoughts on the Suez fiasco, Eden concluded ruefully that ‘we need a smaller force that is more mobile and more modern in its ...”

“... to Egypt in the early 19th century convinced that it was, somehow, their home. Johann Burckhardt, William Thomson (known as Osman effendi), John Gardner Wilkinson, Robert Hay and Edward Lane also ‘went native’ on their travels. Like Champollion, they aped the robes and turbans of the Ottoman ruling class, browned their skin, and made a show of living in ...”

“... form of Post-Enlightenment rationalism with a mystic hope of social metamorphosis inherited from William Blake. Over the next fifty years Owen sought to realise his vision in a variety of ways – as a model factory employer, as the founder of socialist communities, as a patron of trade-unionism and workers’ co-operatives, and as the sponsor of a wide ...”

“... supporters into the Moonie milieu with his Accuracy in Media movement: among AIM’s patrons were William Simon, the former Treasury Secretary, Joseph Coors, the beer magnate and Reagan confidant, Claire Booth Luce, Jimmy Goldsmith and Richard Mellon-Scaife. Moon now felt confident enough to take on the hated New York Times by launching the New York News ...”