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“... of a solution, by fleshing out the original makers of the myth – Joe and Rose Kennedy. David Nasaw’s The Patriarch is a comprehensive account of Joseph Kennedy’s ascent from lace-curtain respectability to extraordinary wealth and political influence, followed by exile to the margins and vicarious achievement through his sons. Nasaw shows that ...”

“... and in leaving would express his thanks again. He left them smiling and thinking, what a nice young man!’ He would write graceful follow-up letters: ‘It was very pleasant meeting you both and your charming daughter, and it is nice to know that Joyce had such good company in Zurich.’ Such a remark, Leader says ...”

“... man my father smoked quite heavily and his fingers were stained like this by cigarettes – and a nice brown it was, and one which I wouldn’t mind seeing on the wall; if he were alive still and the man he was when I was ten I could take him along to Cornelissen where I’m sure they could match his fingers in water, oil or acrylic. And it stirs another ...”

“... Spurs had a vacancy when they did – a vacancy created by the resignation of Tel’s predecessor, David Pleat. Pleat had been fingered by the Sun as a kerb-crawler and there was much bar-room speculation at the time about tip-offs, fit-ups, Sun stringers on the Met. The first Sun revelations came in July 1987, and Pleat survived these. The second round came ...”

“... Suzuki at Columbia University, and a brilliant and devoted interpreter acquired in the pianist David Tudor. Although Cage’s chance procedures were extremely time-consuming – many tosses of coins or drawings of yarrow stalks being required for the least decision made with the I-Ching, and computer aid not yet available – that was essentially all that ...”

“... wilderness, Pym’s novel Quartet in Autumn had at last been accepted for publication: Larkin and David Cecil had independently named her as their choice of ‘most undervalued writer’ in the 75th-anniversary number of the TLS. As Pym’s diary records, they had kipper pâté to start, after sherry; and then ‘veal done with peppers and tomatoes, Pommes ...”

“... The effect is perversely satisfying. Anywhere else but in Milton, you might feel grateful that a nice-sounding word has been chosen over one of its synonyms. Milton makes synonymity impossible. He doesn’t just choose the right word: he chooses the right word for the wrong – for the pleasingly obstinate – reason. One contemporary English novelist has ...”

“... looked burdened, his eyes heavily pouched, his shoulders sagging, a cigarette (two cigarettes in David Levine’s caricatures) always in his hand, a man wearied by liberalism’s failures, American literature’s failures. Grinberg recounts a fine moment early in his career. In 1936, Trilling was informed by the English Department that as a Marxist, a ...”

“... member, I have now read, in addition to the biography, the full-length critical studies by David Mikics and James Naremore, watched Jan Harlan’s excellent documentary, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, and explored every entry in The Stanley Kubrick Archives edited by Alison Castle: a 13-pound art-historical tome containing solid articles on every ...”

“... there was a lot of rushing about that I certainly couldn’t control and didn’t even desire. A nice boy called Alan Mindel slipped on some polished linoleum as he raced around, hit his chin on the veneer of a rosewood dressing-table, and had to have a couple of stitches put in. My mother reacted with fury and gave me a beating in front of several ...”

“... middle-aged people, and even some people holding blue and white flags with the star of David on them, representing the Jewish community, or so they said. Here I met my friend Vadim, a former employee of the Black Sea Shipping Company. These days he works for whatever foreign shipping agent needs a chief mate; he’s away at sea for months at a ...”

“... infinitely elastic budgets (any challenge an act of naysaying treason). The Long Good Friday has a nice tracking shot through the deserted quays of the future Docklands. The TV comic Dave King, playing a corrupt detective, reprimands Hoskins. A car has been detonated outside a Hawksmoor church. ‘We can’t have bombs going off, Harold. We can’t have ...”

“... that dispose one somewhat more against Tennant. Philip Hoare relates one, as told by the Hon. David Herbert, about his treatment of the actress Margaret Rutherford. He cultivated her assiduously – even, more or less, proposing marriage to her – and she fell for his charms, and then when one day she came to his house for the weekend, he quite shattered ...”

“... beastly drunk, honk, bray, bully, drive offensively expensive Rolls-Royces, and flaunt their other nice things in the faces of those who cannot afford them. Their very nicest things are beautiful women like Francesca. – much preferable to the Guardian-reading drabs and West Indian whores who would normally cater to Colin’s needs did he not nurture ideas ...”

“... motifs are intertwined with contemporary academic and sexual politics, clearly owes a good deal to David Lodge; the theme of the lost literary legacy invokes The Aspern Papers; James might be cited again in relation to the book’s punning deployment of ‘possession’ as a term of material, erotic and demonic significance, an association that also reminds ...”