“... in a country church through much the same eyes as I see a village cricket match on the village green.’But Stanford hadn’t set out to be only a church music composer. He had much grander ambitions, which centred on becoming part of the German orchestral tradition, something he hoped would bring him instant recognition and respect. Certainly it can have ...”

“... They were full of the clichés of the Raj: flying fish, lascar seamen, coolies, amahs, syces, green-eyed idols and fiendish poisons leached from tropical plants unknown to European science. At 11 I embarked on my first love affair, falling hopelessly for Kim. Never have I yearned so much to inhabit someone else’s skin as I did Kim’s. Even now, past ...”

“... with my stepson-in-law on a halcyon day like this. As I take the hose out I see it’s blue, not green. I’ve filled my car brim-full with £44 worth of diesel. Two hours of frenzied thinking, rethinking, conferring with mechanics, phoning the AA, being towed to a garage at Tarbet on Loch Lomond, transferring luggage, boots, rucksack, camera and crates of ...”

“... not least on the Barclays’ home turf of West London, where the slumlord turned property mogul Peter Rachman was making his fortune. The brothers set up an estate agency in Notting Hill. One day a woman came in looking to move to a particular street in the neighbourhood so that she could be near her elderly father. Frederick showed her a small house on the ...”

“... CDU-FDP coalition and opened the possibility of a new progressive alliance. The first Red-Green coalition took office in Hesse in 1985. In shabby trainers, Joschka Fischer, once a street-fighter of the hard left, was sworn in as Hesse’s environment minister. By the end of the 1980s, with the pugnacious Oskar Lafontaine, the prime minister of ...”

“... in winter, looks down on an open-air chess arena which, in season, is assaulted by morris dancers, green fools, bikers, tame Goths, blueskins with nothing left to tattoo except their eyeballs. Kötting has set himself up, inside this sail-making loft, with a garden shed. A hut with a heater. Here, twice sealed from the world, he reminisces about the journey he ...”

“... had fabulous orange juice at that hotel.LeonieShe has one drooping eyelid and lives with Uncle Peter beside a big shallow lake. To swim you walk out miles. She tells me I had written all the lyrics of Joni Mitchell songs and in her dream sang them to her. Uncle Peter, once an architect, wears colour co-ordinated shirt ...”

“... are vaginas’ and ‘penises are eyes,’ not to mention the following lines: Our lovely green-clad mother spreads her legs – Corrosive, hairy, rank – and, shameless, begs For Pestilence to fuck her if he can, For War to come, and come again, again.In the evening I might turn to the overwrought adulterous rhapsodies of Marry Me (1971), in which a ...”

“... a purple fitted corseted top and romantic puffed sleeves. The colours were yellow, turquoise, red, green, pink and mauve ... This dress was later photographed in Los Angeles and I wore it in Monte Carlo to Craigie Aitchison’s exhibition ... I immediately acquired a new admirer: Prince Rainier’s chamberlain, no less. He rang the gallery and asked, ‘Qui ...”

“... there is a better reason for not having a ballot, one which Scargill and the NUM general secretary Peter Heathfield (especially the latter) used constantly, but which is not to be found in these two books. It is the differential problem: that a ballot on an issue which affects all miners equally is a reasonable proposition, while a ballot which affects ...”

“... a Saturday night’. I assumed this meant the place would be teeming with Irish people, hearty and green, enjoying a good night out. A vision leapt unbidden to mind, embarrassing in its insistence and sentimentality, of a prelapsarian Ireland, the Ireland of The Quiet Man, of fresh-faced cailins and freckle-faced lads, soft brogues, mischievous ...”

“... film sealed between the glass sheets turns the daylight scarlet, turquoise, sharp yellow, light green and bluish mauve. The array seems to distil many of the experiences of colour currently on offer in urban Britain. It translates the patterns of dresses, T-shirts, shopping bags and car paint passing along the Horseferry Road; it’s echoed by commercial ...”

“... American normality, a world in which money is not really the point, just ‘a piece of green paper with a picture on it’, something you might use to buy ‘the occasional bowl of Wheaties’. As for the late Leo Castelli, he was just a dealer, too, but one who took a much greater risk, because the reputation of his gallery was so much greater and ...”

“... left after a tooth extraction. The Chinese Embassy in New Belgrade, with its pagoda-like roof of green ceramic tiles, at first appears untouched, but round the corner a whole slice of the building is missing, revealing a cross-section like an architect’s model. In the old town, rebuilding has begun. The shattered windows of the Orthodox Patriarchate have ...”

“... that dress was as black as a starless night and she’s ruined it by making it an idiotic green.’ Or: ‘Is that what she really thought of me, back then?’ Or: ‘I’m glad I’m not one of those vulnerable people who isn’t in the book.’ Or: ‘Fuck! That minor character is me. Me, a very minor character.’ Ceci n’est pas une pipe. It’s ...”