“... confident that it would not, but two of the British Chiefs of Staff, Field Marshal Slim and Sir John Slessor, warned that ‘there was a real likelihood and danger of the Chinese taking this action.’ A million-strong Chinese Army duly flung the US back, Truman began fingering the nuclear trigger and Attlee flew in panic to Washington to stop him. This ...”

“... as Smith has it, a tic that runs throughout the book), Walter Benjamin (or ‘the popular wise guy Walter Benjamin’). Each chapter has a cute digest at its head, announcing the delights on offer: ‘Alex-Li Tandem was Jewish – A rainbow over Mountjoy – Hand-print – Superstar – Princess Grace – Marvin is a milk operative – Alex’s feminine ...”

“... a daughter, and he hates toffs – or ‘Ruperts’ as Chris Ryan calls them. The average McNab guy will have seen things that are the stuff of nightmares, possibly in Northern Ireland; he will live in a desert storm of acronyms; he will speak pornographically about guns, rifles, rockets and weapons systems; he will deploy a freely offensive shorthand about ...”

“... New York Jewish family. People argued about whether his gift was an act of self-hatred or a wise guy’s last laugh. Judging from the reaction at the time, it didn’t occur to anyone that it was a matter of principle. And that included me. Sparks’s will, filed in New York County Surrogate’s Court, became a cause célèbre. The judge handling the case ...”

“... have the infrastructure of black organised crime that exists in America.’ The next jaunty tough-guy is something of a showman. Pete Gillet was recommended to Duncan Campbell by one of the imprisoned Kray brothers – who play an influential role in this book, despite being labelled out-of-date in the modern world of crime. A convicted thief, Gillet has ...”

“... By the time you read me, anything might be happening. Brian Clough or Bob Stokoe or Elton John could be the new England manager, nursing bruised dreams for the World Cup in 1986. On the other hand, Sir Ron Greenwood might even now be contentedly inspecting the hotels in Bilbao, hoping to find a likely venue for the lads next summer. Thanks to a series ...”

“... and Hawksmoor’. Invoking those artists rather flatters whoever designed it (Orbach proposes John James). The third prodigy of the English baroque, Thomas Archer, like Vanbrugh worked nearby in Dorset and Hampshire (both of which south Wiltshire might comfortably be part of). Vanbrugh is the possible author of Netherhampton House, between Salisbury and ...”

“... unspent was left to happen as fearfully as it would.’ In the hands of such writers as Trevor and John McGahern, the short story in Ireland has made an unexpected comeback. Earlier generations – that of Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain and, before them, of George Moore and James Joyce – had established it as the quintessential genre for a society ...”

“... wager – had he so internalised what photography did to things that he no longer needed to look? John Szarkowski, then the head of photography at MoMA in New York, considered the man he had championed so enthusiastically (‘the central photographer of his generation’) wholly profligate in his last years: a profligacy that was also a symptom of a desperate ...”

“... knowingness and flamboyance you have to come right up to the present and the stories of John Morrow, in which the native idiom and capacity for non-serious outrage find their fullest expression. All these afford no more than glimpses, if compelling ones; as yet, no Honorary Consul, Golden Notebook or Burger’s Daughter has come out of Belfast. As a ...”

“... of characters throughout his career. But to claim that Shaw is both the central characters in John Bull’s Other Island, and three of the major figures in Heartbreak House, is to stretch the notion of the factual original beyond snapping point. Further, the autobiographical model obscures other particularities of the Shavian dramatis personae. There ...”

“... when he was preparing to become George Smiley; he ‘could never make close ties with people’. Guy Burgess was ‘always dirty and smelt’. This diary is also a love story: ‘The sun was shining and Alan took my hand.’ Eva Taylor considers her husband ‘cleverer than Macaulay’, whose works he reads to her, along with Gulliver’s Travels and The ...”

“... which passed through the president’s neck and then through the body of the Texas governor, John Connally; and Oswald’s own murder while in police custody at the hands of Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. Despite these anomalous features, Kennedy’s assassination was – conceptually speaking – a straightforward event. While academic historians ...”

“... the while; the car-bomb attacks on the West End of London and Glasgow airport and have-a-go hero John Smeaton’s assault on one of the bombers; the floods that put large parts of Yorkshire and the Midlands under water; the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal. The narrator starts the book as an ‘I’. Later, a ‘he’ appears who, it gradually ...”

“... even more so than Eli and Harry, which Iona wouldn’t have thought was possible, but this guy was something else, it was like his muscles had muscles. Also he seriously knew how to make an entrance. He did a slow look around and then walked over towards them. Nousche stopped swimming, came to the side of the pool and draped her arms over it, the ...”