“... for the narrator’s habitual academic delivery, one baulks at this stilted sentence: ‘You may be ever so much of a gentleman and a privy councillor, but if you have a daughter you cannot be secure of immunity [my italics] from that petty bourgeois atmosphere...’ This is exceptional and no worse than Hingley’s maladroit update in ...”

“... Nashe. In 1599 the bishops had ordered ‘that all Nashe’s books ... be taken wheresoever they may be found and that none of [his] books be ever printed hereafter.’ Within two years, having been prohibited from earning his living as a writer, Nashe had died, in extreme poverty. In Middleton’s fable, the Nightingale, who is herself a poet, laments to ...”

“... in the best manner of spy novels; and is very well served by his translator, the veteran David Floyd. This is the fourth volume he has distilled from his experience and he is about to produce a fifth, on the Spetsnaz – against whom Britain’s expensive ‘Brave Defender’ exercise was directed earlier this year. Having completed his five-year GRU ...”

“... by major mutinies: some large towns were held by mutineers with local support for up to a week. In May 1949 two frontier battalions defected, with their officers, to the North. Meanwhile, guerrilla warfare broke out throughout much of the South, and was particularly strong on Cheju Island, off the south coast – the furthest point from North Korea. Cumings ...”

“... as if they/Could master all things.’ All this has a bearing on the before and after story that David Ellis wants us to take more seriously as the real story of Byron’s life. In Ellis’s view the summer of 1816, which he spent in Geneva, marked a turning point in Byron’s life. He was, Ellis tells us, acutely unhappy there, though the unhappiness had a ...”

“... their stocks of ideas too rapidly. ‘Our problem is that we never wanted to repeat,’ says David Thomas, singer with the early American post-punk group Pere Ubu. ‘That desire … became as much of a trap as trying to repeat formulas the way some bands do.’ Yet Reynolds is too busy working through all his overlapping band biographies to pursue this ...”

“... Astronaut Scott shoves Astronaut Oates off the steps of the module – ‘I am going up now. I may be gone for some time’ – and blasts off. For Dorothy, this is the end of all romance (‘Goodbye spoony Juney Moon’): the men are unworthy of the Moon. Opening in January 1972 at the Old Vic, Jumpers came two and a half years after the Apollo 11 ...”

“... school linked with mine was always known simply as the Boy from Chick. The hanging incident was in May. Two months later, the press arrived again. On Tuesday 13 July, the Metropolitan Police raided a house in Lees Holm, a mixed area between mostly Asian Savile Town and mostly white Thornhill Edge. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7 July bombers, had ...”

“... but a Tory government nor by the sound of it ever wants to. At Birmingham I have a session with David Edgar’s playwrights’ class, then do another ‘Our Alan’ performance for a more general audience. 26 January. Run into Tristram Powell. Andrew Devonshire (sic) has done a diary for the Spectator mentioning the memoir of Julian Jebb (edited by ...”

“... the cowboy statue has sought protection from the elements and taken shelter indoors. Florence has David, also transferred from open to inner space; Orange County has John Wayne. Orange County, where unfettered individualism rises from a government-subsidised foundation in mineral wealth, agribusiness, aerospace and real-estate speculation. When John Wayne ...”

“... When Tooley stepped down in 1988 he’d been with the House since 1955, first as assistant to David Webster, the Liverpool department-store manager who’d built it up from its wartime use as a dance-hall, and then for 18 years as general director. The high point of Webster’s reign was the Georg Solti era (1961-71). Tooley presided over the rather ...”

“... which jumped around all over the place when he talked – which was a great deal of the time’. David Gascoyne described in his journal in 1936 how Jennings dominated a meeting of the English Surrealists, ‘as usual … boiling over with energy and excitement’. He reported, too, the scene when Jennings and Tom Harrisson met to discuss the formation of ...”

“... in point would be The Elephant Man (1980), a still from which appears on the cover of the book. David Lynch’s film may indeed demonstrate ‘time-worn points of view’ in some ways, and its central figure may indeed combine the stereotypes of the Sweet Innocent and the Saintly Sage ...”

“... properties to the government. What’s more, no information regarding property titles may be disclosed, so claimants can’t even begin to avail themselves of the nominal restoration of 1986. Such seemingly technical administrative measures have sufficed to prevent the opening of any new church (Armenian or otherwise), synagogue or non-Muslim ...”

“... our MPs merely put in for duck-houses, moat-clearance and jumbo TV sets). And as anti-Zionism may often disguise anti-Semitism, so Europhobia proves a handy disguise for wider xenophobia. But of course it wasn’t just the press. Few prime ministers in the years since Edward Heath signed us into the EEC have found it either natural or politically ...”