“... writer, earlier than Thurber and much more distinguished. The Duke of Ferrara surely fathered Gilbert Osmond, Henry James’s lethal dilettante in The Portrait of a Lady: a man who at first represents ‘the artistic life’ to the naive heroine, but whose antiquarian talent proves in fact confined, in a penetrating image, to tracing the common coinage of ...”

“... sculptors (also collected by Saatchi), on established Turner-winning Brits like Richard Long and Gilbert and George, on old bugbears like Warhol and Richard Hamilton. Shortly before Fuller’s death, he thought the tide was turning: Serota seemed to be coming into line, even Saatchi was investing in the School of London. Then it turned right back. In his ...”

“... the tiled halls, and now and again there was the silent apparition of a bald-headed man in a white towelling dressing-gown. I rented a cubicle, about which I remember only the enormous size of the key, and I lay down to sleep, but I couldn’t. I passed the night with a high fever, travelling through strange, lurid nightmares. In my lucid moments, I ...”

“... slimness of his boyish figure, the slenderness of the bare legs that protruded from his billowing white shorts, one of the legs folding back and resting on the other knee.’ As they left the café, Wilde asked Gide if he wanted the boy. Gide nervously said that he did. Wilde, having made the arrangements, laughed uproariously as his suspicions about Gide’s ...”

“... and the American West Coast, Britain pushed the Versailles conference of 1919 to mandate the Gilbert and Caroline Islands, and the Marianas group, all formerly German, to Japan. Japan promptly, and illegally, fortified them. Japan’s supply lines to its new possessions crossed America’s communications with the Philippines, which also lay athwart ...”

“... officials from the British Consulate were waiting on the quay. The passengers (Helen, sheet-white) were bussed straight to the consulate, where they were offered sandwiches, tea, cigarettes and more forms to fill in. My uncle Peter thinks they were then put up for a couple of weeks in the Pera Palace Hotel, established in 1895 by the Wagons-Lits Company ...”