“... courtyard. The entrance lobby’s cool, airy silence was a contrast to the intense heat and white light of the afternoon outside. I took the lift up and was let into the office, where I was shown into an empty room with a desk. I spoke with the first of the people who had been asked to come for interview. As with every compliance audit, on my list of ...”

“... prices). But I was at the semi-final a few weeks earlier to see Wimbledon beat Luton Town 2-1 at White Hart Lane, and that was the most fun I have ever had at a football match: a raucous, hilarious, ecstatic confrontation between two overachieving sides whose supporters could barely fill Tottenham’s ground between them. When Wimbledon went on to win the ...”

“... famous actors by their Yiddish birth names (Emanuel Goldenberg, Jules Garfinkle, Bernie Schwartz, Sam Klausman etc) as if this is prima facie proof of treason. HUAC member Representative John Rankin curses them on the House floor as ‘Communist kikes’. After two years pounding the back lots and working the studio corridors, at the age of 29 Clancy drove ...”

“... wheels bolted to planks – the first skateboarders. There are girls and boys, black and white, from the city’s poorest neighbourhood, and they outnumber the spectating parents in the photograph by 13 to one. The boy whose father takes him swimming, the girl whose mother takes her to the theatre, children whose parents ‘do things’ with them ...”

“... so much so that R. doesn’t even see the queen, though she’s distinctive enough, dressed in white and glittering with jewels, determinedly animated and smiling, which, since she’s been at it for two hours already, is an achievement in itself. We go on through the rooms, talking to all sorts of people – Jim Naughtie, Nigel Slater and David Hare, who ...”

“... Lee hadn’t interested anyone in making, which continued with Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002). Lee’s lawsuit got him a pay-out in 2005, reputedly of $10 million, but his outgoings were huge, and the settlement meant he had no stake in the endless cycles of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) pictures that went on to suck all ...”

“... lot, incognito or on the Onassis yacht. She invested her money wisely. She bought some paintings. Sam Green, the art dealer recruited in 1970 to act as the New York minder of the world’s most over-exposed recluse, amassed hundreds of hours of telephone recordings. Gottlieb quotes a passage from the tapes to demonstrate how unrevealing they are. (I believe ...”

“... the passionate hater of Blair and Blairism who has a place in his heart for the Fabians and the white heat of technology; the enthusiast for Portsmouth’s Tricorn Centre (above), demolished in 2004, who dotes on Lutyens; the proud insulter of Islam who loves the multiculturalism of Birmingham; the critic of colonialism who relates the horrors of the Opium ...”

“... doubt that Knox has suffered. But the photo feels somehow unbearably false.In the New York Times, Sam Tanenhaus was dismissive of Knox’s ‘well-orchestrated round of TV appearances’ and pointed out that her ghostwriter had previously collaborated with Socks, ‘the Clintons’ “first cat”’. Then he got on to what really bothered him: Knox’s ...”

“... 22 September. XR has constructed a lightvessel on wheels, about the size of a bus. In large white letters on the red hull: ‘Sound the Alarm. Climate Emergency.’ It makes its stately way along the front from Hove towards the conference centre, with an entourage of noisy activists, many on bicycles, sounding their bells. It’s equipped with an ...”

“... detached and commanding narrative voice which broods on the pathos of distance: between black and white, home and abroad, innocence and experience, men and women. These stories have dispensed with the services of a narrator whose sentimental and veterinary education might reconcile separate worlds, might dramatise growth or assimilation. The writing ...”

“... in a pile of abandoned stuff outside one of the houses, a rise and fall French light fitting, white pottery shade, a little battered, but with the counterweight intact. It’s a nice find, though, like its ex-owners, we don’t need the fitting, but if we did … It’s cheering for R., who’s in turmoil over developments at the magazine and has pretty ...”

“... called Basta Pasta on 17th Street. I thought that sounded like the kind of place my friend Sam and I would find insufficiently grand for breakfast, but when I got there I saw that it was in fact rather posh. Lots of yellow lighting and noise but most of all there was heat – it felt like an oven and half the old-timers were falling asleep as I came ...”

“... it’s the same game. Like the Russian oligarchs, Branson has made little of his money in the white heat of market competition. He prefers to avoid competition when he can. His business strategy is to get as close as possible to the people with power and then exploit the connection for all it’s worth. As Bower reports, Branson’s record in launching ...”

“... about whom and Harriet Beecher Stowe he writes his best criticism, the father is obviously White Master, though there is also White Mistress, in whose capacity to read and write, and in her willingness to teach them both to a young slave, Douglas begins to discover the instrument both of freedom and revenge. Fear of ...”