“... about the future is a lens for apprehending the present: Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is an X-ray of 1948, and so forth. Lem himself, in an interview, pointed out that Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’ isn’t better than The Castle for having come true. Then again, perhaps these two things are really one: to bring oneself to see the present is to see ...”

“... about whose life we know very little emerges by this measure as the undisputed Top British Person: William Shakespeare (1564-1616, ‘playwright and poet’) is allotted more than 30,000 words, a length achieved only by devoting a large proportion of them to various aspects of his literary after-life – about which, of course, we know a good deal more. The ...”

“... consecutive tournament victories (Chile 1962); Bobby Moore borne aloft by Geoff Hurst and Ray Wilson (England 1966); Gordon Banks’s ‘Save of the Century’, and Moore and Pelé swapping shirts (Brazil 1970); the Cruyff turn (West Germany 1974); Maradona about to take on six petrified Belgians, and Marco Tardelli’s primal scream (Spain ...”

“... wondered if his Resistance past was a myth, all part of the same persona as his Stetson and Ray-Bans. Thanks to two recent books – Bertrand Teissier’s biography Jean-Pierre Melville: Le Solitaire and Jean-Pierre Melville, une vie, an unusually illuminating coffee-table book by the film critic Antoine de Baecque – we have a much fuller picture not ...”

“... and diaries and subsequently in the biographies of Eliot’s London friends and associates. From Ray Monk’s Life of Bertrand Russell, or Hermione Lee’s of Virginia Woolf, or Miranda Seymour’s of Ottoline Morrell, there comes an abundance and, in its repetitiveness, an overabundance of testimony about Vivienne’s or Tom’s nervous as well as physical ...”

“... consider carefully’: An easier way for Mr Bennett to earn could be possibly with ray co-operative part. Two young men could follow me in a car, one with a camera to get a funny film like ‘Old Mother Riley Joins Up’ possibly. If the car stalls they could then push it. Or they could go on the buses with her at a distance. Comedy happens ...”