“... society, like all the other arseholes.’ Which is why he was recruited by MI6. He was a natural. Hamilton McMillan (‘Mac’), an old Balliol chum, took him aside for the traditional sounding out. The chain of clothes shops, AnnaBelinda Ltd, in which Marks had an interest, could be used as safe-houses, dead letter drops; could expand into Romania and ...”

“... consumer’. Paul Gascoigne was, Wilson says, ‘catnip’ to this demographic, citing Ian Hamilton’s writing in Granta and Karl Miller’s celebrated paean in the LRB (29 July 1990): ‘fierce and comic, formidable and vulnerable, urchin-like and waif-like, a strong head and torso with comparatively frail-looking breakable ...”