“... The result is a panoramic account of 19th-century literary life. ‘Just who were these people?’ Simon Winchester asked in The Meaning of Everything, his 2003 account of the dictionary. Ogilvie follows the paper trail they left, which extends all over Britain, Europe and the Anglophone world.She arranges her chapters, in lexicographical tradition, according ...”

“... novels, and the four volumes of memoirs, and the three volumes of journals, and the biography of John Aubrey, and the collected reviews and criticism. Anthony Dymoke Powell was born in Westminster on 21 December 1905 – a wintry rather than a Christmas baby. ‘It was because he was Welsh,’ Barber teases, ‘that Powell pronounced his name to rhyme with ...”

“... I read: ‘Denis is in a very bad way.’ Alas it turns out to be Denis the cat. 14 September. John Bird calls to ask where I found the phrase ‘the habit of art’. I came across it in Mystery and Manners, a book of the incidental writings of Flannery O’Connor: ‘The scientist has the habit of science, the artist the habit of art.’ ...”

“... more mutually supportive. It was not that the British were unaware of the dangers of this. Sir John Troutbeck, one of the two Ambassadors of the Fifties examined in the chapter by William Roger Louis, was outspokenly crit ical of the immense social gaps, and in his view Western education had only made the younger generation of Iraqis more narrow-minded ...”

“... homosexual “submission”, can complete a genital act “in expressing a power relationship”. John Boorman’s film Deliverance makes striking use of this theme in depicting the maltreatment of urban “trespassers” by rustic hunters.’ It is this modern view of penetration, universalised by human-zoo logic, that makes the ancient phallocracy ...”

“... enough not to encourage laziness or dilettantism . . . say £150 to £300 a year’. And Simon Armitage, in 1998, seems to agree that now and then a bit of poverty can keep a writer on his toes. ‘At some points in my life it’s suited me to be skint,’ he says. ‘Poetry is connected with the root conditions of being alive, and one aspect of that ...”

“... consequently, Labour should show ‘humility’ and return to Blairism under a different leader. John Rentoul recently wrote in the Independent that the Labour Party has moved ‘to the left faster than the speed of light’. The definition of ‘left’ here is one that few outside Blairite circles would recognise, but it’s still telling. The idea that ...”

“... down: discord, harmony, error, truth, despair and hope, often at the same time. In doing so, Simon Jenkins argues in his new book, she set in train a pair of revolutions which continue to do whatever revolutions do – revolve? – today. The first revolution is the one everybody knows about and, with few exceptions, accepts as a precondition for the ...”

“... centrality in British culture. Characteristically feeble echoes of this assault were evident in John Major’s recent sneering at ‘progressive theorists’, but some years ago the real emotional dynamic was laid bare, indecently bare, by (as usual) Norman Tebbit, who extolled ‘the man in the pub’ against the upper-class ‘cocktail set’ on the ...”

“... take long for all that to change. In a book full of closely observed incident and character, John Kampfner describes a zadvorkia, or courtyard party, which he happened upon in Central Moscow soon after Yeltsin won the Russian Presidency in June 1991: ‘I had stumbled on the nouveaux riches, the New Russians as they came to be known, at play for the ...”

“... periodical dedicated to denouncing ‘the Auschwitz lie’. The editor has silently juxtaposed Simon Wiesenthal’s comments on this with Penny Vicenzi’s delightful advice to adulterers, from The Complete Liar. What was Lawrence’s ‘integrity’ exactly? – was it, like Kurt Waldheim’s, lost by fudging a CV? Enough lies by the virtuous can even ...”

“... best with the now well-known stories (how I bowdlerised The Carpetbaggers in a weekend; how I paid Simon Raven fifteen quid a week to stay out of London and write, etc). And he has been permitted to shy a stone or two at some of his enemies (notably André Deutsch, who – apparently – has had the gall to demand back an advance from Blond). There is also ...”

“... boats from nostalgic black and white photographs. It was an unoptioned metaphor with its own poet, Simon Armitage, hired to knock up a thousand-line tribute. Time drifted. The 12 minutes of the virtual reality journey in the brochures was actually the time between trains, the time spent enjoying the strange termini in which potential travellers are ...”

“... First Family might constitute an offence against the ethos of the republic. Although only John F. Kennedy held the presidency, there were several attempts to restore the family to the office. JFK’s brother Robert was assassinated after his victory in the California Democratic primary in 1968. The immediate chances of a third brother, Senator Edward ...”

“... 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 ...”