“... things are there.’ Similar scenes, evocative rather than detailed, abound in Buchan and Brett Young, in Waugh and Wodehouse: their country-house world was ‘mellow, dignified, creeper-clad and bathed in perpetual sunshine’. Significantly, this attitude prevailed at a time when, for the first long period in four centuries, few new country houses were ...”

“... lawful manuscript. But hurt letters are not the stuff of which suppression is made – even the young Tory Rupert Allason’s rather disingenuous recent book on MI5, under the pseudonym ‘Nigel West’, was treated to the compliment of injunction proceedings and a little filleting. It may be that MI6 no longer care very much about the trickle of ...”

“... Theory, after all, has made it possible for a lot of old buffers to reappear in the world as young buffers; they are not likely to jeopardise their rejuvenations by behaving loosely. Empson thought one of the most attractive features of Buddhism was its ‘coolness ... towards Heaven’. ‘Also we are told there was a minor god who became interested in ...”

“... is why it has long employed teams of psychologists to help market its products to children as young as two. Give it a child at an impressionable age, and it will have a customer for life. Ben Rogers is aware of food’s emotional power, and of its ability to create bonds between people. In Beef and Liberty, he has written a whimsical, amusing, informative ...”

“... that Powell would have attempted Point Blank. Not that anyone in 1967 had reason to think that a young Englishman raised on the leafy edges of south London (Carshalton, and later Shepperton) would know how to go to Los Angeles (and San Francisco), into the heart of noir mythology, to make a movie that alarmed Hollywood. Boorman was 33, and probably as ...”

“... elder sister. Apart from a spell in Dr Barnardo’s, Harding’s schooling was limited, and as a young boy he learned how to steal from the market and pinch goods from shops. He tried his hand at cabinet-making, and even enlisted in the Army when still too young. But the pattern of his life was set when, in 1902, he first ...”

“... all take their toll on well-being and work. Even by the neurasthenic standards of the age, young Thomas was a class act. Composing a letter is ‘torment’; sleepless nights are spent ‘moaning, vomiting and retching from intestinal nerve pains, suffering quite dreadfully’; his pursuit of Katja Pringsheim costs him ‘more than a little ...”

“... and a peacock called Mirabell, all of it recorded with the help of Merrill’s longtime partner, David Jackson, during twenty years of séances using a Ouija board at their home in Stonington, Connecticut. This volume tips in at 560 pages. Merrill also wrote novels, plays and two memoirs. Born to enormous wealth, he had little to distract him from his ...”

“... Many men are angry about the change and have been left feeling disempowered, both the indebted young and the embittered old. That makes bad politics. And organising resistance to capital has become harder, because there are so many more interests to reconcile. Work is now part of the great unbalancing.War, labour, patriarchy: these were the building blocks ...”

“... is the ‘net product’ of the various over-exertions required of him when handling timber as a young man; he can recall the occasion of each fracture and sprain. The injuries are as much the man as his social and professional status. To live and work is to deteriorate physically, until you become your deteriorations. Deformation is formation. Lawrence was ...”

“... small paragraph to indicate that the man under discussion was America’s most innovative young dramatist since the late Sixties, had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1978 and certainly hadn’t said goodbye to writing yet. I would like to think Shepard had some control over the two photographs that made the covers of the Colour Supplements at that time. One ...”

“... time. And Lord is no snob: he can be just as odious when presenting non-celebrities. A pretty young woman could make her living in Montparnasse without a specific occupation. She could encourage the clients in a bar to do a bit more drinking, or strike up acquaintance with potential admirers who might be glad to give a girl a helping hand without ...”

“... away I have seen a bittern planing down to its nest in the reedbeds of a wide undrained moss and a young osprey resting in a sycamore on its way south from Speyside to winter in Africa. The fact is that, partly by luck and partly by choice, I have managed to live and take my recreation in places where the ground is so rough or steeply contoured that the ...”

“... the way developments in algorithmic warfare have transformed Israeli military operations.I met David (names have been changed throughout) in June at a café in West Jerusalem. He had volunteered for reserve duty in the Israeli intelligence corps a few days after the 7 October attacks. Many Israelis are one degree of separation from someone ...”

“... the magazine published a controversial account of the trial by Hannah Arendt.In 1961, Lore married David Segal, a young literary editor who had made a name for himself rescuing the rejected (as one of their number, William Gass, put it). David ‘insisted’ that his wife should return to ...”