“... the two memoirs. Were Picasso able, from beyond the grave, to ban it, he would do so. The idea was John Richardson’s. He provides a contextual epilogue, taken more or less verbatim from the second volume of his mammoth Life of Picasso. Marilyn McCully (who is working on the third volume with Richardson) provides a foreword and biographical notes. Letters ...”

“... of us don’t know what to look for, however, and the aerial view is alien to our sense of scale. John Wise, the pioneering American aeronaut, thought he was looking at a waterfall in a pleasure-garden when he saw Niagara Falls from space. ‘I was disappointed, for my mind had been bent on a soliloquy on Niagara’s raging grandeur … The little frothy ...”

“... the imposing sandstone cliffs that mark the entrance to Port Jackson and into a waterway that John White, the First Fleet’s surgeon, proclaimed as ‘the finest and most extensive harbour in the universe’. The hyperbole was perhaps understandable, for the Britons were seeing Sydney Harbour through eyes wearied by months at sea, and this was to be ...”

“... publication is as yet only partially complete. The first six volumes take us as far as 1804 (it took Grieg two to cover the same span); at the present rate of production – two volumes per half year – the full text should be available by the end of 1981. The editors have decided, partly because of financial considerations, not to append notes or an index ...”

“... You’re smiling; you’re wincing; but still a last gasp in you recalls the pleasure you once took in finding out who wins. Envelope-itis. Are we kidding? After four months of the ‘awards season’, reaching from the tarnished Golden Globes to the diligent film critics’ circles in provincial cities (there are a hundred schemes of ...”

“... the impression McEwen made in his life. He was born into a Scottish gentry family, the son of Sir John McEwen, Conservative under-secretary of state for Scotland, and his wife, Brigid Lindley. Rory and his five brothers and one sister grew up in Berwickshire in the family’s Palladian mansion, Marchmont. Commenting later on his interest in Redouté, he wrote ...”

“... a dust-sheet over her first husband. Miss Edwards excellently takes it off. The second husband, John Marsh, was an advertising copywriter and a PR man. He read her epic carefully and, among many other things, took out the dashes. Gone with the Wind was written in a peculiar manner. It is, of course, very long, but epics ...”

“... Wilson’. The likes of, eh? Still, this helps introduce a rather interesting section on Tate, John Crowe Ransom and the so-called Southern Agrarians. Tate, who was more or less openly nostalgic for the Old Confederacy, half-adopted ‘Caliban’ Lowell and had him to stay in his ramshackle home, Benfolly in Tennessee. It’s clear that his long ...”

“... known stronghold.In 1858, two English ornithologists went to see the great auk for themselves. John Wolley and Alfred Newton travelled to the south-west peninsula of Iceland, hoping to visit Eldey and return with some specimens to add to their collections. Newton even dreamed of capturing a live auk for London Zoo. But their trip was a failure. Bad weather ...”

“... a Jewish manufacturing family called the Oppermanns; not Anthony Trollope, or Anthony Powell, or John Galsworthy, whose writing desk was purchased by Gabriele Tergit for the karmic storage of her manuscripts. These are books that have a strong narrative beat and keep you turning the pages by virtue of speed, coverage and pressure of events. The Effingers ...”

“... represented a headache for Charles Stewart Parnell. History was Daniel O’Connell, Parnell and John Redmond, who led the Irish Parliamentary Party in Westminster after Parnell. My grandfather had been interned after the 1916 Rising, and sometimes when the older generation in my family gathered they talked about the Fenians and evictions, Black and Tan ...”

“... are used throughout the book) are both dated and revealing. Egyptian resistance took many forms, and the country wasn’t handed independence, but won it in the face of censorship, martial law, and the imprisonment and exile of many of its leaders.Most histories of Egyptology begin in earnest in July 1798, with the arrival at Alexandria of ...”

“... merely reverse them. Stress on the whole Tudor Myth, concern with the source materials Shakespeare took from contemporary historians, whether primarily ‘for’ the Prince or ‘for’ Falstaff, prejudges the actual form and substance of these plays.Scholarly criticism of the Henry IV plays is haunted by an interesting problem of structure. There is marked ...”

“... and art’ preoccupied Gray in equal measure. The writing of his first novel, Lanark, which took two decades, went hand in hand with his studies at the Glasgow School of Art and his first commissions as a painter of large-scale, teeming, Hieronymus Bosch-style murals. From the mid-1960s he also made a decent living writing plays for BBC television and ...”

“... both morals and the constraints on writing luridly about the consequences), the Sunday Pictorial took on the role of public educator and serialised a pamphlet to help parents explain to children how a baby was born: ‘The sperms of men, like those of the four-legged animals, live in a little bag. The father places the sperms in the body of the mother in ...”