“... all separate in our bodies, all nobody to each other and everything to ourselves.’ Readers of David Plante’s novels may recognise this brand of solipsism, half stricken, half thrilled. It would be untrue to say that the conviction of solitariness goes untested in the course of the book, but by the end it has been vindicated at least as much as argued ...”

“... thinking: ‘I too could have been a contender!’ There are other challenges in Ring of Truth. David Ruddock’s wife, a pious Roman Catholic, feels challenged by the Pope’s visit to Britain and wonders if she ought to become a Bride of Christ. Dave’s young brother, a professional soldier, is called to fight in the Falklands, meeting the reluctant ...”

“... high boredom threshold. Indisputably the greatest game ever written for the BBC was Elite, by David Braben and Ian Bell. The aim was to travel through eight galaxies, each with 32 solar systems, trading cargo, battling enemies and becoming a steadily more feared space pirate. Not only were you able to save your progress as you went along, but the game ...”

“... what with one thing and another I’ve sometimes felt the same way, on behalf of Mark Frost and David Lynch, about the news environment that accompanied the broadcast of Twin Peaks: The Return. I say ‘on behalf of’ because I imagine that Lynch couldn’t care less. ‘It’s good to kind of go along with your life,’ he told Entertainment Weekly in May ...”

“... of Scotland. I feel like a film reviewer who has started the week with an Ealing comedy or one of David Lean’s novel-adaptations (cutting out all the messy, sissy bits) and then has to plough through a set of desperate cast-of-thousands horror-movies. No doubt, Don Bloch and Denis Johnson are properly concerned about leprosy in Africa and the dangers of ...”

“... and lions, with titles like ‘The Old Warrior’ (a lion, not a Masai). These are the work of David Shepherd and Simon Combes, who have donated reproduction fees to wild-life conservation funds. They are relevant to the text, in which the Baroness zestfully celebrates the beasts she killed, and also relevant to the tears of the moviegoers, enchanted by ...”

“... of it), refuelled by access to new material and a reduced fear of libel. Of the seven children of David and Sydney, Lord and Lady Redesdale, six were girls; the Mitford industry revolves, lighthouse-like, between them. Nancy, the novelist, wit and Bright Young Thing, comes to prominence whenever her books are dramatised; Unity and Diana, the Nazis, are ...”

“... can’t give the impression of looking inside a mind directly, and must find its own equivalents. David Lean declared that in The Passionate Friends (1949) he had succeeded in photographing thought, though he was referring not to the film as a whole but to one sequence, in which Claude Rains’s character jumps to the conclusion that his wife is having an ...”

“... shout their presence (the radically different visual effect of the original is illustrated in David Norton’s The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today, as well as in Campbell’s own Bible, another history of the KJB). It’s a pity, but the change emphasises just how remote the modern ‘King James’ Bible is from its original. It ...”

“... A recent Italian book on the films of David Lean is called Colour and Dust, and with an amplification or two the phrase offers a pretty good description of his later work. The colour is mainly orange, and a lot of the dust is sand, especially in Lawrence of Arabia (1962). More generally, of course, the phrase evokes the director of swirling epics, a sort of Cecil B ...”

“... at UCL have often gone to people with a foot in the literary world outside the academy. David Masson, who succeeded Arthur Hugh Clough at UCL, wrote an immense Life of Milton, ran his department with great success, and in his spare time edited Macmillan’s Magazine. His successor Henry Morley was, as Sutherland says, ‘a heroic populariser’, a ...”

“... gifted him with plenty money when he came out. In many ways it was a balanced life. Jokes like ‘David son of Joshua Son of Isaac son of Abraham O’Neil is in town and kiking everybody with big promises’ (to Ezra in 24) don’t have anything to do with it. I wrote terrific letters to bigots like Cardinal Spellman and Joe McCarthy and only regret I ...”

“... Choderlos de Laclos​ ’s Liaisons dangereuses is remembered for its salacious intrigues, but it’s also about the condition of women. Addressing the Vicomte de Valmont, her partner in games of intimate deception, the Marquise de Merteuil declares that all aspects of social life are more fraught with danger for women: ‘As for you men, your defeats are only a success the less ...”

“... he might be tempted to make such a barely thinkable journey, it was now. He was 31, famous for the David and the Pietà, but his dealings with the pope were deadlocked. If Europe’s ultimate patron was being difficult, perhaps a more obliging one could be found elsewhere. In his author’s note, Enard cannily stops short of asserting the factuality of the ...”

“... the Museum of Rouen to inspire him when he was writing the story called ‘Un Coeur Simple’. David Hockney produced an etching to illustrate that story, and it is reproduced on the dust-cover of Julian Barnes’s novel. The narrator is interested – in an untidy, stream-of-consciousness way – in the significance of that parrot, appearing to the old ...”