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“... politicised his favourite mode with the onset of the Civil War – attacking his former friend George Wither for joining the Parliamentarians, for example, with the couplet ‘For Nonsence is Rebellion, and thy writing/Is nothing but Rebellious Warres inciting’ – Malcolm is so vehemently opposed to the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, for whom nonsense ...”

“... thing is that he goes into New York with a scrubby chin, looking perfectly foul.’ He described George Orwell (whom he met in 1944) as a ‘gentleman beachcomber’. Wodehouse’s writerly fans include some of the arch-blimps of Eng. Lit.: Hilaire Belloc called him ‘the best writer of English now alive . . . the head of my profession’; Evelyn Waugh ...”

“... volunteer wrote, ‘but there is no possible means of wearing it without looking like a moth-eaten bird with a broken wing.’ They were each allocated five rounds of ammunition. But, as one French Communist deputy told them in farewell, ‘What you lack in weapons you will make up for in courage.’ Orwell thought this was baloney. The opinions of the other ...”

“... Siberian crane dancing on the banks of the Irrawaddy River because the performance ended with the bird being shot by soldiers. Then there was the impeccable subheading to a cable from Dagestan: ‘Postscript: The Practical Uses of a Caucasus Wedding’. Not all were so light-hearted: other cables showed that many American diplomats didn’t want to be posted ...”

“... There was a Memorial Church, a Memorial Arch, a museum for Leland Jr’s bric-à-brac – jade bird, beaded necklace – and a mausoleum for his mortal remains. In 1893 an exact replica of his bedroom was installed in the museum. His father was added to the mausoleum later that year. An empty sarcophagus awaited his mother, its inscription already ...”

“... of hours in the sun eating candy and talking.’ Eileen had no axe to grind, which made her a rare bird among the expats in Barcelona and may have accounted for her charm in Charles and Lois’s eyes. For all their zeal, they were a lively, sociable couple. The fourth member of the party on that bucolic outing was ...”

“... others shouting, while one demented wretch shrieked at short and regular intervals like a tropical bird. Almost worse was a big dull-eyed woman who sat bolt upright in her bed, oblivious to the surrounding tumult, as silent and unmoving as a stone deity. Obviously, I thought, we have strayed into the wrong ward, much as Elizabeth Taylor did in the film of ...”

“... thousand distinguished fashionables’. On 12 April, she was received at Carlton Palace by King George IV, who, it was reported, ‘expressed great pleasure at her appearance’. So many people came to see Crachami that she was soon exhausted. In fact, she may have died of exhaustion, though it was more probably TB. On Thursday, 3 June, she received more ...”

“... Jeffrey Archer. I am rereading the Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters and come across this remark by George Lyttelton: ‘Sprinters always try to beat the pistol, therefore are essentially unscrupulous and unreliable.’ 30 August. A commercial for Carte D’Or ice cream I would have been very pleased to have written. A family which includes the aged grandmother ...”

“... has become an American protectorate, and America has told Syria that it must, like a rare breed of bird, adapt to the new environment or die. The Syrian Army and Intelligence Services are playing their own imperial game in Lebanon, but their presence there has become as vulnerable to American subversion as America’s forces are to indigenous resistance ...”

“... but meanwhile they merely tried to put him off. Just before he was due to perform in the ‘Blue Bird’ pas de deux he was given telegrams from his father, his mother and his teacher, Pushkin, respectively denouncing him as a traitor, cajoling him into returning and prophesying the loss of his technique. At the same time French Communists had been sent out ...”

“... attractive work’, Milton gives thanks to God chiefly for three reasons. The first, in George Burnett’s 1809 translation, is that I was born in those times of my country, when the effulgent virtue of its citizens – when their magnanimity and steadiness, surpassing the highest praise of their ancestors, under the inspection of God first ...”

“... yellow breasts, which seem to be nesting in the creeper rather than by the beck, which is what the bird book says they should be doing. Chrissie opposite says she has a couple of yellow wagtails in her garden, but she is much nearer the water. Not sure how common grey wagtails are, I knock on Timmy Hutchinson (Timmy the Twitcher)’s door to tell him so that ...”

“... before, that he had sucked up to Williams in a queenly manner and that, in the opinion of ‘The Bird’ (Vidal’s usual term for Tennessee’s person of plumage and flutter), he was an old gentleman ‘with urinestained flies’. Thus the newer version is more instructive and nearer to the nitty, if not indeed the actual gritty. In a letter to Jack Kerouac ...”

“... different periods of time. Each poem in Clavics looks like a key constructed from shape poems by George Herbert: the blade of the key is a double-decker version of Herbert’s ‘The Altar’, while the handle has the bird-shaped narrow waist of ‘Easter Wings’: ‘I am good for nothing/Else these days than making of ...”