“... the form of a watermill whose wheel actually turned, a bright red gobstopper (illegal), a polished stone egg. I was reluctant to let the box go – our new house was just a few hundred feet away in the same West London street; we had only to turn left and walk across the railway line with its barriers that lifted and swayed like a pleated skirt – but someone ...”

“... the animation of the inanimate, the restoration of the deathly to health, the bringing of stone or bone or art to warm life. We see an early, bewildered version of it as far back as Endymion, where a mortal in love with the immortal moon encounters a cavern full of long-frozen lovers and, by his mere arrival, restores them to life, an essentially ...”

“... of 1955, one remembered in Scotland for its long procession of warm and cloudless days. We climbed stone stairs and looked into bare stone rooms. It was tremendously dull. Everything of interest lay outside. I was ten and keen on ships, and through dusty windows I could see a much more attractive world, and hear it, too ...”

“... ministers, came and went, and in Sir Kevin’s case the Queen felt she might simply be a stepping-stone to those corporate heights for which he was undoubtedly headed. He was a graduate of the Harvard Business School and one of his publicly stated aims (‘setting out our stall,’ as he put it) was to make the monarchy more accessible. The opening of ...”