“... it might be funniest if gangsters did have just these conversations, and why shouldn’t they? Richard Nixon and his aides turned out to talk exactly like the President Philip Roth had invented in Our Gang. Tarantino wrote Natural Born Killers after True Romance and before Reservoir Dogs. He says he hasn’t seen the Oliver Stone movie, and while we may ...”

“... didn’t compose a word of it apart from the quotations from speeches, and probably didn’t even read it all. He headed the Soviet Union, as leader of the Communist Party, from 1964 until his death in 1982. Before that, he had served as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet for several years. But no insatiable lust for power, no gift for ...”

“... holding her own under questioning by prelates and canons. Without formal education, unable to read or write, she responded with such luminous clarity that when she repeated that her voices had returned to her, the scribe was moved to exclaim, ‘Responsio mortifera’ (‘a fatal reply’), in the margins of the court record. Benedict XVI recently advised ...”

“... by such as Julian Huxley and Joseph Needham. They had not lasted. The writer just quoted is Richard Hoggart, whose memories of his time in Paris are not fond. The picture he paints of a Unesco General Conference – the kind taking place through the door just to the left of Picasso’s mural – seems relevant. Meetings usually start late. There is no ...”

“... of context or, at best, misinterpreted … For the record,’ she added, ‘I have never heard or read that there was any CIA relationship, direct or indirect, with Oswald … I do not recall saying that the withholding of FBI information from CIA Mexico Station was deliberate, nor do I believe it.’ But Roman never sent her four-page letter to the ...”

“... with ageing veterans about their experiences, asked them to fill out extensive questionnaires, and read letters they had sent to their wives, girlfriends, parents and siblings, as well as their (far more explicit) journals. But she also wanted to know how the war was discussed at home, especially after France’s defeat, when appelés were scrambling to ...”

“... his credit) he stumbles several times when he has to broadcast this absurdity. 4 April. Asked to read The Good Companions for a possible production I find I can only get as far as the end of Act I. It’s interesting, though, in that it’s Priestley on one of his favourite themes, that of escape and escape from the North particularly. Act I, Scene I ends ...”

“... the Anglican Bishop of Stepney, Tom Cook, former Deputy Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, and Richard Stone, Chairman of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality. The Lawrences decided that Sir William was an unsuitable chairman, given his record in immigration proceedings. (The Observer also objected to Edmund Lawson, Counsel to the Inquiry, on the grounds ...”

“... McLaren and Johnny Rotten – who captured my imagination. What clinched it for me was a profile I read in Melody Maker in June 1979, the third part of ‘The Rise and Fall of Malcolm McLaren’. I’d missed the first two instalments, but it didn’t matter: I read and reread the piece that summer. Sharply written by ...”

“... around, humiliated’, as Ebert put it, upset the critics, though some of their remarks now read like a particular kind of pearl-clutching: how dare she, who has her mother’s face and low voice, look so cheap? But her tawdry turn isn’t great just because it made the nuns in Rome pray for her; it’s great because she seemed to understand, more than ...”

“... love for the common man, but written in such a forbidding way that the common man is unlikely to read it. Well, The Lord of the Rings is the opposite. It is a work written to keep the modern world at bay that the modern world adores. In the late 1990s, Best Book polls conducted for Waterstone’s and Channel Four, the Daily Telegraph, the Folio Society and ...”

“... of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby. The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead ...”

“... and his great novel, Beltraffio, ‘was a kind of aesthetic war-cry’. His wife, who has never read his great book, engages with him in a sinister struggle for possession of their child. Not only does she cosset him and create neurosis in him – as any parent might – but she attempts to ‘shield’ him from the mysterious laxity of his father’s ...”

“... to social reality, and which could only ever be partial. Thus it is a mistake, Mitchell says, to read Freud as just another proponent of patriarchal morality, telling women they would be happy if only they submitted to the dulling pleasures of wifely and maternal duty. Indeed, Freud came increasingly to emphasise the impossibility of the ...”

“... followed the goings-on over the break-up of the marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales or read any of the literature it has occasioned. I don’t say this prissily. In my own circle of friends divorce dismays me for entirely selfish reasons: it alters the social landscape in unpredictable ways, curtailing friendships, shutting down havens and ...”