“... and sought to bring a private suit for criminal libel, appeared to have it on the ropes; how John Wells felt that his jokes were ‘ostentatiously removed, spat on and ground into the carpet’ after brainstorming sessions with the others; how, as time went on, Ingrams loved to wind up his colleagues in the office, push his chair back and look on at the ...”

“... of the city’s unfathomable complexity. At the time I was reading The Delirious Museum I took a Saturday walk in Paris from the Musée Carnavalet, which stands in the narrow streets of the Marais, to the Musée d’Orsay, grand enough in itself and made grander by its position, across the river from the Tuileries and the Louvre. Paris is generous to ...”

“... gave IAEA inspectors access to all its remaining nuclear sites. But when the Bush administration took over in January 2001, it refused to confirm that it was bound by the ‘no hostile intent’ statement; then it announced that North Korea was part of the ‘axis of evil’; then it abandoned the fuel oil shipments and the reactor project. North Korea ...”

“... pleased. The situation was accepted by circle on circle of distinguished friends, and when Arthur took a second mistress, a warm-hearted and perhaps rather tactless young journalist from New Zealand, it seemed best, as far as possible, to ignore her. Alison Grant Robertson had none of the qualifications (knowing the Stracheys, knowing the Farjeons, knowing ...”

“... are note-like sketches – the one of hanged men, for example, or the drawings of the entourage of John VIII Palaeologus, the Byzantine Emperor, made when he was attending the Council of Ferrara in 1438 – but it is the worked-up studies which best meet Facio’s description: of a horse harness drawn as though to instruct a farrier, and the different ...”

“... gardening has been the fashion.There have been times, however, when London’s green tide was out. John Evelyn’s intentions in writing Sylva (‘A discourse of forest and the propagation of timber in his majesties dominions’), published in 1664, were practical. The book answered a request from the Commissioners of the Navy to the Royal Society for advice ...”

“... of a head, the angle of a leg, or the loop of a skipping rope add movement. English painters like John Bratby and Jack Smith were drawing on similar subjects with a not dissimilar, calculated clumsiness that trades crispness for directness, as though seeking to match the thing drawn in the accent of the drawing. ‘Catterline in Winter’, c.1963. Her ...”

“... in that: he would be president himself one day. So it came to pass. As president, Johnson took advantage of all the powers of office he had done his best to preserve intact. These powers, along with his secretive and manipulative personality, allowed him to drag the country step by step into the Vietnam War. The oversight that might have saved him ...”

“... and on 2 May the blockade began in earnest. Hemon, in Chicago, applied for political asylum and took any job he could find – assembling sandwiches, selling magazine subscriptions door to door – while getting to work on his English; later he enrolled on a master’s course at Northwestern University. By the time he was able to revisit Sarajevo, in ...”

“... the far end of a corridor of brilliant commentary. There are many entries here for the writers who took up with him – Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris, Sartre and Beauvoir, Jean Genet and others – though none under B for Beckett, and none for John Berger, who was cool at first, then much warmer, coming under fire from ...”

“... found a patron in Fred Holland Day, a wealthy Bostonian aesthete and photographer, who not only took photographs of Gibran (a big-eyed, soulful-looking boy), but also introduced him to the writings of Maeterlinck and Whitman.Eventually, Day became an eccentric recluse, but by then Gibran had found other patrons. He was to spend a large part of his life ...”

“... decline, but eating bananas had been the major cause of death. A lawyer called Albert T. Patrick took charge of the funeral arrangements. On the day after Rice’s death, Patrick tried to have four cheques certified. The cheques, all made out to himself, totalled $250,000, and appeared to have been signed by Rice on the day before he died. When James ...”

“... Holy Land was at its most holy in your own heart. This might be a demanding belief for those who took it seriously, but religious certainty could also make it a comfort. Sometimes the reassurance came a little too easily. Even when such faith was common, the inward annexation of the Holy Land made sophisticated religious thinkers suspicious. In Apocalypse ...”

“... Of guitar pioneer Les Paul we learn that Bill ‘found him charming’. He and blues singer John Hammond ‘chatted for a while’. He ‘met’ Bob Dylan. Above all, what you miss from Wyman’s account – that word again – is any pride in, or even positive recognition of, the danger of the Stones at their peak. This is the band that played ‘Stray ...”

“... of Europe, notably Britain, the American Revolution may still be unfinished. Looking back in 1818, John Adams asked a fundamental question: ‘But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people; a change in their religious ...”