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“... on Calcutta to pick the dying off the streets. If Muggeridge’s film made Mother Teresa a ‘star’, as Hitchens puts it, in 1971 (the year of the Bangladesh war, of which Muggeridge seemed blissfully unaware), it still leaves unaccounted for the immense stretch of time between 1948 and 1971, during which her Order must have established and entrenched ...”

“... trousers and a battered hat with a brim that hid her face’; the visiting Bertrand Russell; Christopher Isherwood; and Huxley’s favourite mystic, Krishnamurti, accompanied by a retinue of Theosophists and vegetarian catering ladies in saris. While his guests looked like pixies ‘on a spree’, according to Loos, Huxley himself resembled a ‘giant ...”

“... director of a new generation. Working without a pulpit were other top-notch talent scouts and star-makers, such as Gary Fisketjon, the Random House editor who created the trade paperback series Vintage Contemporaries, the springboard for Jay McInerney’s breakthrough novel, Bright Lights, Big City, and Morgan Entrekin, the editor at Simon and Schuster ...”

“... from early adolescence, and there remained something boyish – a constant grasping at the gold star – about his professionalism to the end of his life. The child was ‘delicate’: he suffered from hayfever, asthma, nervous stomach aches, psoriasis (‘red spots, ripening into silvery scabs’, an inheritance from his mother); he was afraid of ghosts ...”

“... performance, the long-breath rant with its doomsday imagery, its wild repetitions in the mode of Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno, persuaded Ferlinghetti to send a telegram paraphrasing the note from Emerson to Whitman from the appendix to Leaves of Grass. ‘I GREET YOU AT THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT CAREER. WHEN DO I GET MANUSCrIPT OF “HOWL”?’ Howl ...”

“... Price); a memoir by its most senior diplomat, the former ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer; and now memoirs by the former prime minister’s wife, his deputy and his bagman. The granddaddy of them all, Blair’s own memoirs, are still to come. It is an unprecedented cascade of memoirs by prominent figures in a government which ...”

“... When​ family and friends of Christopher Hitchens periodically tried to persuade him to temper his unhealthy lifestyle, they used to point out how awful it would be if Henry Kissinger outlived him. Hitchens spent years pursuing Kissinger in print – and sometimes in person – for his assorted war crimes. He wanted to see him prosecuted at The Hague ...”

“... Double Falsehood was the involvement (in a manner of speaking) of another, even bigger theatrical star, for it was Theobald’s remarkable claim, teasingly publicised over the previous months, that his play was based on a hitherto unknown work by Shakespeare. ‘It is my good fortune to retrieve this remnant of his pen from obscurity,’ he says with studied ...”

“... titles have tended to the oblique and allusive, offering no clue to subject matter (The Folding Star, The Stranger’s Child). By comparison The Sparsholt Affair has an almost retro directness, strongly implying that someone in the book called Sparsholt will have an irregular relationship that results in scandal. This is true, just as it’s true that ...”

“... animation. But Olamina dies before the starships actually take off. The first is called the Christopher Columbus, in spite of her objections. ‘This ship is not about a shortcut to riches and empire. It’s not about snatching up slaves and gold and presenting them to some European monarch. But one can’t win every battle. One must know which battles ...”

“... recording and performing group.Waller would go on to become famous and recognisable as a Hollywood star, featured in ‘all-coloured’ musicals such as Stormy Weather (1943). From May 1934 until his sudden death in 1943 at the age of 39, he recorded a staggering 402 numbers for RCA (plus radio transcriptions), only 20 of them as a piano or organ ...”

“... regime. Far from exploiting his position as Lord Chancellor to harry his political rivals in Star Chamber, he demonstrated to the rich and powerful, without fear or favour, their equality before the law with the poor and weak. What then of his legendary success in removing or isolating his enemies from the Court? The success is indeed a legend, for ...”

“... World. The story breaks. Archer resigns as deputy chairman, but sues another tabloid, the Daily Star, for libel. The subsequent High Court action, in July, 1987, had everything. A loyal wife. A weeping prostitute. An un-English ‘sneak’ in the shape of a rich Pakistani lawyer. But most of all it had Mr Justice Caulfield, whose summing-up contained ...”

“... do heroin it was the end for him.’ But, of course, using drugs is a symptom, not the disease. As Christopher Gibbs says, There were various chimerae that he was pursuing. And they were all to do with fulfilments of some kind. I think Robert was far too enthralled with his lower nature. I really do think he was seriously indulgent to his appetites. I ...”

“... secret temples of Moloch. The experiments, proofs and improvements espoused by such scientists as Christopher Wren, Dyer’s patron in the building trade, Dyer pisses on. The homicides and post-mortems in the book permit the new religion of science to exercise its power: but they also occasion the necrophile broodings which exude from Dyer. Much of this ...”