“... blurbs, and not only from other writers. He figures on Granta’s list of the ‘Twenty Best Young American Novelists’. The Spokanes were ‘a salmon tribe before they put those dams on the river’, fisherfolk living in settled villages. Most of Alexie’s work is set on their reservation in eastern Washington State, and what’s most alive in that ...”

“... of the films showing at the London Film Festival later this month is The Quiet American, starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser, directed by Philip Noyce, and based on Graham Greene’s novel. (It isn’t the first time the book’s been adapted for the screen: Mankiewicz made a version in 1958 which Greene, who anyway tended to have a very low opinion of ...”

“... concept of Kingship – and by his very appearance. The image of the hero in Western civilisation, young, blond, with a beauty whose hint of effeminacy is constantly belied by his actions, derives from the representations of Alexander which have come down to us from Antiquity. War was an extension of his personality: for him it was not an instrument of policy ...”

“... also means (and probably is the origin of) ‘swindle’. Visiting Venice, Sebald thinks two young men may be following him. ‘The fear passed across my mind that these two men who were looking at me now had already crossed my path more than once since my arrival.’ He takes off for Verona, where he sees (or thinks he sees) the same men again: I ...”

“... though he found Lindbergh ‘as nice as can be’. He described him as ‘like a bright, young chauffeur’. Ludovic Kennedy draws attention to a disagreeable side of Lindbergh’s character: a taste for aggressive practical jokes. But he was fearless, and an inspired mechanic. When he took off at dawn on 20 May 1927 for his historic flight across ...”

“... Heaney on the front of the companion volume to this one, New Selected Poems 1966-87, painfully young, worried-looking, Noh-rice-flour-pale, against a dark brick wall. The riot of hair came later, in the 1970s, the period after the epochal move out of Belfast down to Glanmore in Wicklow, the Noddy Holder whiskers, the period of ‘Exposure’, of ...”

“... by an old man, inspired by Hrabal’s Uncle Pepin, a top-gallant, one might say, addressing his ‘young ladies’. It was written in the 1950s and first published in 1964, as Hrabal’s second book in print. Michael Henry Heim’s English translation appeared in 1995, when Hrabal was 81. Old book? New book? ...”

“... the trappings of the hardened old warhorse you could still see traces of the impetuous young thoroughbred, who had enchanted Leiris and others a quarter of a century before.’ Well, yes. Most of us were easier to take when young, especially if we were beautiful, energetic, bright and eagerly ambitious, as Sonia ...”

“... hall above the pub and there’s a lot of shouting. Later, as we are getting into the car, Gary, a young man crippled with arthritis, calls out to A. from the snooker hall. She knows him and asks if it was him that was doing the shouting. ‘Yes,’ he says proudly. ‘You shouldn’t.’ ‘Why?’ he asks. ‘Because,’ I put in weakly, ‘it’s a free ...”

“... the Great Stanton, putting on his show in fancy nightclubs. Molly (Coleen Gray; Rooney Mara), a young woman from the fairground, is his partner: he plays the Zeena role and she collects the questions from the audience. Everything goes smoothly until the psychologist, all too symbolically called Lilith, appears in the audience. Helen Walker was pretty good ...”

“... movie’s travellers get some food and spend a piece of the night. An old man lives there, and a young girl, who provokes most of the speculation about beauty and danger. Again, the building is an outpost against the dark. Seen from outside, light leaks out under the door, round the sides of the curtains. But not ordinary light from rural Turkey, more like ...”

“... was only four years away. But what was so modern about the Rossellini film, and why did it seem so young? The answer, I think, has to do with the refusal of the apparently inevitable melodrama – how could there be a journey without change or redemption? – and again, with the transposition of Hollywood actors into a world that has left them stranded. The ...”

“... Cage owes money to his bookmaker – he bets on American football games – roughs up a young man with strong political connections, threatens an old lady by tearing her oxygen tube out, bullies a football player into throwing a game, and crosses over to the real dark side by selling police information to a top drug dealer. Nothing but trouble is ...”

“... snowy fields and leave them to die. We see her on this mission with one of the babies. When its young mother finds out what has happened she commits suicide, and the sisters refuse to obey the abbess, who seems to be dying of advanced syphilis caught from the soldiers. Something happens to the film, and perhaps to the real-life story it is based on, when ...”

“... The cinematographer is José Luis Alcaine. Estrella is played by Sonsoles Aranguren when young, Icíar Bollaín when older. The transition from actress to actress is effected elegantly by having the first go to school on one bike, the other return on a different machine. We see some of the sources for Estrella’s idea of the south in a box full of ...”