“... woman who tries to compete with her husband’s fantasy sex partners hasn’t a hope. She’s the Norman Tebbit of feminism, a founder member of the on-yer-bike branch of the women’s movement; and I don’t imagine she’ll be sorry to think that it’s all over for her contemporaries; that for us what she memorably calls ‘the ...”

“... unintentionally hilarious pages. Throughout, he refers to himself in the third person, rather as Norman Mailer and my small children do; though my kids, of course, do it only when they know they’ve been naughty and wish to neutralise rage with bogus charm. Gay Talese did all this dreary work – nearly a decade of listening to socially disorganised wankers ...”

“... Muir. The Beckinsales – one native to the north Cots-wolds and the other to the Vale of the White Horse – present what is for them the English heartland. Richard Muir, nostalgic for the Nidderdale hamlet of Birtwhistle, offers his view of the evolving English village. Both books communicate the enjoyment that their authors have had in compiling ...”

“... as Mr Kettle proceeds, we still lack an authoritative account of the Russian civil war (like Norman Stone’s The Eastern Front), so that certain judgments on Allied policy must remain provisional, however rich the Allied records. Why did Britain become involved in Russia? Basically because the War Cabinet feared that a Russian withdrawal from the ...”

“... words. Fergusson wants the great lexicographer to be fed, among many other oatmeal-rich dishes, ‘white and bloody puddins routh,/To gar the Doctor skirl, O Drouth!’ Here Watson’s line-by-line glossary will assist the uninitiated, who may feel that they have come a long way from the Latinate English of ‘the frost subdu’d, / Gradual, resolves into a ...”

“... increase its underground following. It was Ginsberg’s old Columbia colleagues, John Hollander, Norman Podhoretz and Louis Simpson, all cutting their teeth in the New York literary scene under the approving auspices of Lionel and Diana Trilling, who led the charge against the Beats. ‘It is only fair to Allen Ginsberg to remark on the utter lack of decorum ...”

“... faces south of the river for regular bits of business, cash drops. These heavy suits would sit, white-knuckled, fingers digging into the scarlet leather, until they made it safely home to Poplar. They piled into the nearest boozer and pitched back the doubles until they could lift a shot glass without spilling half of its contents. The ride to the tunnel ...”

“... to serious non-fiction, from the days of André Maurois’s romanticised version of Shelley to Norman Mailer’s pastiche of Marilyn Monroe, have seemed more dubious. With Peterley Harvest there was an additional problem because, unlike recent fictional diaries such as Nazi Lady: The Diaries of Elisabeth von Stahlenberg 1933-1948, or fictional ...”

“... accent, and who used to sign off with the phrase ‘Hearty Cheerios!’ The name was also given to Norman Baillie-Stewart, a Scot who had been imprisoned in the Tower in 1933 for selling military secrets to the Germans, and was one of the first Britons to join the English language service in Berlin. Barrington described his creation as speaking ‘English of ...”

“... Powers, there is a parody of a Betjeman poem. Thus kneeling at the altar rail We ate the word’s white papery wafer. Here, so I thought, desire must fail, My chastity be never safer. But then I saw your tongue protrude To catch the wisp of angel’s food. In a brilliant piece of word play the angel food cake of the children’s tea-party becomes the ...”

“... sovereignty, free will, moral truth, reason – as exclusivist and self-serving creations of white, heterosexual bourgeois males. In the regime of deindustrialisation and globalised financial capitalism that followed the oil crisis of 1973, man would be increasingly deprived of his work ethic (and self-worth) and burdened by unprecedented professional ...”

“... Now another guide enters and, propping herself, kneels by me with a small bowl. She removes a white lotion (baby cream?) and then starts to massage (I see, the medium is the massage) my hand. At first I am unresilient, but then begin to ply her hand with the lotion. Couples begin putting the stuff on hands, arms and faces to feel and touch. We are inside ...”

“... Papist Normans came sailing over the horizon. Just as tabloid gangs of Albanian drug-trafficking white slavers were now reputed to be sneaking ashore on Romney Marshes, at Deal and Camber Sands, on their Rigid Inflatable Boats, kayaks and leaking air mattresses. Could anyone bring themselves actually to cast a vote for Brexit, a commodity that sounds like a ...”

“... Anglicists if they knew what the English flag looked like. Yes, they replied, it’s that red, white and blue one with crosses going different ways. At least they were pleased to discover that the English flag is the exact reverse of the Danish one, for, as Saxo Grammaticus wrote long since, history in the North began with two brothers, whose names were ...”

“... information. Nowhere was this clearer than in the row over sanctions against the ‘illegal’ white minority regime in Rhodesia from 1966-79. Throughout the period in which he was wooing black African rulers – telling them, among other things, that he detested the racialist Rhodesian regime – Rowland maintained his mining and other business interests ...”