“... a great shower of light flying behind it, and also that the thing itself doesn’t look like a star but seems circular. In fact what is surprising is that a comet should look like the illustrations of comets. It’s so bright it’s as if there is a hole in the surface of the sky, a porthole through which the light is streaming from the shining world ...”

“... from Smyrna, a Ioseph, a Samouel, a Nigella, an Aemilia, a Martin, a Loukipher and a Christopher. The latter are all late and reveal the way that Greek names changed over time, with the introduction of Roman names, Jewish names and Christian names. Romans had three names, an extremely limited repertoire of forenames (praenomina) such as ...”

“... Murphy, the principal trumpet of the LSO, who did the opening trumpet solo in the music for Star Wars. The service due to kick off at 11.30, George arrives with ten minutes to spare only to find the church already full, the congregation seated, silent and expectant. It begins promptly at 11.30 with everyone behaving impeccably and not a cough or a ...”

“... Mailer’s wingman to be. The stern upholder of heterosexual norms was a later guise. Along with star-spangled kitsch such as My Love Affair with America and neocon tracts such as The Bloody Crossroads, The Present Danger and World War IV, Podhoretz fathered a pair of sequels to Making It, further investigations of the wonder of himself. This was not ...”

“... leading literary scholars have similarly written about their favourite critical subjects, such as Christopher Ricks on Tennyson or Marilyn Butler on Jane Austen. There are one or two notable absences among historians who have written principally on British topics – nothing from Linda Colley or Quentin Skinner, for example – and some of the best-known ...”

“... compulsively’. To begin with, she tried her hand at writing poetry. ‘Unicorn’, the star of the collection published by Rosemary Hill last year, first came out with a tiny press in 1963. A cardboard theatre and a vulgar virgin; a mythical beast with ‘little hooves’ that ‘click like false teeth’. At the age of 23, Carter had ...”

“... ways it was exacerbated – by the fact that she rapidly rose up the party echelons to become a star. In the words of Hannah Arendt, she ‘was and remained a Polish Jew in a country she disliked and a party she came soon to despise’. It is a peculiarity of Luxemburg’s thought – one of her unique contributions – that her critique didn’t temper her ...”

“... though not yet well-known; she had been named after Linda Darnell, her mother’s favourite film-star; she adored cats, but was allergic to their fur. She was involved with various liberal causes, and sometimes asked me to accompany her on protest marches. (Tone, on the other hand, while claiming to be totally non-political, would often express opinions that ...”

“... was a mistake to get involved.’ In order to return to power, Bergoglio hitched his wagon to the star of Antonio Quarracino, who was appointed archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1990. Quarracino, like Bergoglio a Peronist, disliked the government of Alfonsín, who, as Jimmy Burns writes, was ‘the first democratically elected Argentine president seriously to ...”

“... are giving up their jobs in favour of begging. ‘Scruffy Dave Naylor,’ according to the Daily Star, ‘has got it made. He can earn up to £85 a day – doing nothing. He just haunts a tube station looking pathetic, and people drop their hard-earned cash into his plastic cup. For dirty, greasy-haired Dave, 19, is king of the hard-faced professional ...”

“... in, and when the two clashed head-on in spring 2003 had no difficulty prevailing. Britain was star performer in the G8, with no reason to truckle to the wishes of others. In the autumn, Brown told the party thatWhile America and Japan have been in recession – while half of Europe is still in recession, Britain with a Labour government pursuing Labour ...”

“... and its site is still vacant – some trouble about who owns the utilities underneath. A new, four-star City Hotel is due to open nearby in August this year. Meanwhile, the Inquiry put us in the Quality Da Vinci’s, part of a standardised, globalised, American chain.Raining or not, our first order of business was a nostalgic, memory-refreshing visit to the ...”

“... that this was indeed him.The CIA’s involvement was reported by the Reuters correspondent, Christopher Roper, in the story he filed that day, but the crucial paragraph was tactfully removed from the version printed by the New York Time. My own story in the Guardian, which would normally have been reprinted by the Washington Post, was ignored. Not until ...”

“... began pouring down his walls from a flooded flat above him. At 6.20, he got a call from his son, Christopher, who was outside, saying that a fire chief wanted to speak to him.‘Mate,’ the firefighter said. ‘Get ready. Someone is coming to get you.’ He heard a knock at the door and it was them. Two firemen.‘How many are in here?’ one of them ...”