“... appeared in a satirical magazine showing him in short pants next to his father. The caption read: ‘I am told, Papa, that the son of a genius is never a genius himself. Therefore, you can’t be a genius!’ Bertolt Brecht wrote: ‘The whole world knows Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann. By the way, who is Thomas Mann?’ When The Magic Mountain ...”

“... one school in Florida restricted access to ‘The Hill We Climb’, the poem Amanda Gorman read at Joe Biden’s inauguration, after a parent complained that it contained ‘hate messages’.DeSantis is an extreme example of the right’s doublethink around free speech. In that sense he is a boon for more moderate Republicans. His legislative ...”

“... he merely fails to develop a critical idiom consistently different from his poetry. His refusal to read any criticism of his own writings, which Leppmann likens to his refusal to have himself psychoanalysed, is not to be seen as a categorical rejection of all rational-analytical procedures, but as a sign of his determination to choose for himself the ...”

“... on the coast. The visit which was remembered by Jessie Conrad had a purpose. Casement had read Heart of Darkness and he wanted Conrad to support him in the case he was making against atrocities in the Congo. ‘I am glad you read the Heart of D., tho’ of course it’s an awful fudge,’ Conrad had written to ...”

“... courage so that one begins to feel the portrait of Cromwell is as skewed as Robert Bolt’s (or Peter Ackroyd’s) is of More and for the same reason, both men human and therefore venial when embosomed in their respective families. Set against this massive work one’s objections seem petty, and it’s a tribute to the power of the novel that one discusses ...”

“... Tennessee Williams and James Baldwin as one of the pioneers of gay fiction in America. Williams read ‘The Delicate Prey’ while accompanying Bowles to Tangier on the SS Vulcania in December 1948. ‘It was a stormy crossing, and I stayed in my cabin most of the time,’ Bowles said. I also wrote a story during the crossing, which I called ‘The ...”

“... he kept in a pigskin case. Lisa Bernhardt was his second wife and twenty years his junior. She read and spoke French, English, German and probably Italian, and had ambitions as a writer, but got distracted by talking – ‘she was an extraordinary talker, a storyteller who could make the truth with all its ambiguities come whole’ – and her many ...”

“... Italian neighbourhood. They proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s as places to hang out, maybe read, maybe chat to whomever was around or just people-watch. In this millennium, in cafés frequented by young white people, every customer seems to be silently staring at an Apple product, so that the places look and feel like offices. Even this phase may be on ...”

“... of exile, a place where he could be a figure of swaggering talent and a marginal actor. Thus when Peter Hall saw MacGowran on stage in London in 1959 he knew immediately what MacGowran was made for on the English stage. He had, Hall decided, ‘the perfect qualities for a Shakespearean clown’ and he invited him to join the Royal Shakespeare Company to play ...”

“... so coolly or callously, and so at odds with what we know of his own quiet lifestyle that led Peter Gay to describe Burckhardt as an intellectual voluptuary. The founders of the new history may have seen a foreshadowing in Burckhardt, but it was Durkheim they modelled themselves on. The latter’s objective approach, which demanded a hard society of hard ...”

“... later played down the importance of his partnership with Ronson. In The Man Who Sold the World, Peter Doggett quotes from an interview with Melody Maker at the beginning of 1976 (though you can’t really trust anything Bowie said in that period): ‘I honestly can’t remember Mick that well these days,’ he said. ‘He’s just like any other band member ...”

“... table. She rushed over and did the Heimlich manoeuvre and saved his life. Next day the headline read: Barbra Streisand Takes the Food Right Out of a Person’s Mouth.’ Streisand repeats the joke in her autobiography, My Name Is Barbra, to explain why she felt a ‘certain kinship’ with Bill Clinton during his presidency. ‘People can take an ounce of ...”

“... who travel much by bus in Holborn are likely to hear the conductors, not all of whom can have read the Dunciad, calling ‘Theobald’s Road’, ‘Tibbles Road’. Interestingly, the Oxford Dictionary of Christian Names supports both Pope and the bus conductors, pointing out that Teobaldus or Theobaldus is the Latin form of the name for which Tebald or ...”

“... you’ve consented to it by dint of the numberless pages of small print you’ve neglected to read. Your identity is being trafficked and traded, with your permission, by interested parties about whom you know nothing. If any of your devices has geolocation technology, and you haven’t turned it off, you’re now transmitting your exact location to God ...”

“... is a sore head or a streaky patch on a window. Find the remedy, and it’s gone. Limbo dancing, Peter Hain’s sideburns, the Angry Brigade, King Crimson: these films are always so good on perky period souvenirs, so skilled at avoiding most emotions apart from the fake ones. Though actually, I wasn’t impressed by the period detail in Misbehaviour ...”