“... such a carnival spirit.’ In those days of talented amateurs the Eng Lit business was still the Gay Science. Used by Nietzsche, and as a title for his book on criticism by the Victorian reviewer E.S. Dallas, that phrase goes back to the troubadours, beloved of Ezra Pound: and there is a troubadour spirit in both these American poets, the collective spirit ...”

“... than a hundred and fifty pieces extracted from punk fanzines, key texts of pop history (such as Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music and Ice T’s autobiography) and the weekly music press, as well as from more outré authorities on pop music (such as Joe Orton) and a few anti-pop pieces (by Paul Johnson and Richard Hoggart, among others). Liveliest and ...”

“... or partly Jewish background, and thus already semi-outsiders. Two of the most prominent were gay (Wittgenstein and Foucault), one of them (Nietzsche) went mad, while another (Heidegger) became a Nazi. Anti-philosophers are not always in the van of progress. Lurking behind this lineage is the Socratic idea of the philosopher as buffoon, along with the ...”

“... The World-Telegram ran an eight-part autobiography of the new star. (‘My full name is Joseph Peter Di Maggio Jr,’ it began, and thus, Cramer says, ‘Joe attained his first major league record: youngest player ever to get his own name wrong in his autobiography.’ He was Joseph Paul, son of Giuseppe. The space in ‘Di Maggio’ makes another ...”

“... encouragingly, this book also contains a great deal of love and subversion. In the 12th century, Peter Abelard, having been separated from his wife and son, forcibly castrated and confined to a monastery, nevertheless remained committed to the view that ‘no natural pleasures of the flesh should be counted as sin.’ It should not be considered a fault, he ...”

“... that Superman was potentially fascist, that Batman and Robin could be construed as positive gay role models, and that Wonder Woman’s early adventures had a bondage subtext. (Never mind that such views, without the disapproval of gay role models, have since become received wisdom among ...”

“... to make other men fall in love with him,’ she writes. ‘The list of sexually ambiguous and gay men who did find Stevenson almost mesmerisingly attractive is long, including Gosse, Andrew Lang and, later, Henry James.’ In literary terms, which were the only terms properly familiar to Stevenson, ambiguity was at the heart of everything, and The Strange ...”

“... 1980s, when I was researching the commissioning and installation of the statue of Shakespeare by Peter Scheemakers in Westminster Abbey in 1741 as part of my doctorate, I discovered that one of the leading proponents and fundraisers for the project had been Susanna Ashley-Cooper, née Noel, Countess of Shaftesbury. It became clear that she was also the ...”

“... of Roger Casement’s Life and Times, with a Collection of His Diaries and Public Writings, by Peter Singleton-Gates and Maurice Girodias, published by Grove Press in New York and the Olympia Press in Paris, was an extraordinary book. It included potted histories of Ireland, the Congo and the Putumayo in the Amazon basin, an account of Casement’s life ...”

“... was one of the distinctive illnesses associated with the mysterious new condition then known as Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine in January 1983 said it was becoming clear that ‘haemophiliacs are at risk for Aids,’ and argued that using Factor VIII ‘may exact a high cost’. Ten haemophiliacs in the US ...”

“... We were all friends, I suppose. You may not remember Graham, but he was Maureen’s first husband, Peter and Jill’s father . . . you do, that’s good. They were Surrey people: they had a grand house in Caterham. Graham was a rich fellow, talented, energetic, generous; he’d made most of his money as a printer: he published the daily stock exchange ...”

“... operations carried out by a motley crew of spooks. His depiction in the 1998 film Elizabeth as a gay godless politique has little foundation in fact, though the film did capture the obsessive concern with protecting the queen from assassination that so evidently animated him. Described by one 16th-century Spanish ambassador as blunt, uncourtly and dressed ...”

“... such as the Polish nobleman Jan Laski (John à Lasco) and the Italian Pietro Martire Vermigli (‘Peter Martyr’), both of whom rubbed off on Cranmer. One must turn back to A.G. Dickens and his pupil Bob Scribner for a more adequate and curious account of how Luther’s new theology was disseminated and of how it interacted with grassroots reforming ...”

“... high-school teacher George Caldwell, half-myth and half-man like any father. His son, Peter, aged 15, is both convinced of Caldwell’s immortality and fears his death. Because Peter wishes to be an artist, and is experiencing the same awakening Updike experienced, the book is seen through surreal endless ...”

“... he has secretly invested in McCoy’s securities firm, Pierce and Pierce. A sodden British hack, Peter Fallow, who works for the depraved newspaper City Light, is assigned to the case of the white assassin who is supposedly being protected by friends in high places. (One of the more mordant truths proclaimed by this novel is that in high places there are no ...”