“... a name for herself and earn money. Her literary career began with a huge stroke of luck when she took over from Cyril Hare as Faber & Faber’s leading crime writer at just the right moment. Cover Her Face, her first detective novel, was published in 1962. James retained her prominence for more than half a century, and Faber has now reprinted some of her ...”

“... without it the oeuvre would be no more than the interesting record of a pained but minor artist. John Halperin, of course, takes a different view, claiming that a dozen of the novels are ‘first-rate’. In order to reach that total he has to include The Paying Guest – indeed, he thinks it a ‘masterpiece’. As it is a short book, about thirty thousand ...”

“... is a strangulated ‘no’, then ‘you have some explaining to do.’ His own answer predictably took the form of a populist attack on the intelligentsia, the avantgarde and the soup-kitchens of the ‘dependency culture’. It was of course coincidental that the attack – based as it was on well-tried Anglo-American models – was launched from that ...”

“... to Tariq Ali. Before my dismissal, I appeared on television to defend the paper against A.J. Ayer, John Gross and Colin Welch – with a chairman who accused me of being a disciple of Sorel, a writer of whom I had barely heard. (David Caute sardonically notes that ‘the allusion to Sorel was standard nonsense among professors of history and politics hostile ...”

“... not enough. Like the philosopher in Tom Stoppard’s Professional Foul, the difference between ‘John ate well’ (i.e. a lot) and ‘John ate well’ (i.e. in an elegant way), Castiglione’s courtiers know that adverbs can have many meanings. The courtier must not only do his job well (competently), he must also do it ...”

“... its contributors Zukofsky, Carl Rakosi (another Wisconsiner), Charles Reznikoff, Basil Bunting, John Wheelwright, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert McAlmon, George Oppen, William Carlos Williams and Whittaker Chambers, a friend of Zukofsky’s from Columbia who, among other things, later translated Bambi from the German. Quite a diverse lot, although most of them ...”

“... tied up a barge a little too smartly in Alfred Docks and damaged a stanchion; some rudder gear took a knock a week later, but this was attributed to the actions of a passing trawler, and in any case both accidents happened during the war. A mine once detonated against the starboard quarter of the Aysgarth, Les’s regular command, but you could argue that ...”

“... cynical politicians who don’t see support of ‘queer theory and semiotics in the poetry of John Clare’ as a big vote-winner with the folks back home in Kansas. That is one reason why, as long ago as 1962, W.H. Auden said: ‘When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room ...”

“... importance of the media managers. When the Northern Ireland negotiations got serious Tony Blair took Alistair Campbell into the room with him and insisted that Mo Mowlam remain outside. David Trimble was astonished but that’s how it always is with New Labour. Andrew Rawnsley records how the momentous decision that Britain would not join the euro during ...”

“... for Equatorial Guinea, including ‘a shell company owned by Obiang in the Bahamas, whose account took deposits in suitcases of cash in plastic-wrapped bundles’. Staff at the bank hadn’t bothered to read the 2001 IMF reports that detailed missing revenues in their client’s country or to comply with money-laundering laws by establishing the origins of ...”

“... Mary Patterson, married Lewis Sheridan Leary in 1858. The following year, Leary was recruited by John Brown for his suicidal raid on Harpers Ferry, and the bullet-riddled shawl that was eventually returned to Mary was in due course used as a blanket for the infant Langston (a middle name – he was baptised James, after his father). Mary’s next ...”

“... mi,á clàbar criadha tiugh:Air carraig chòmhnaird chuir mo chos;mo cheuman shocruich e.He took me from a fearful pit,And from the miry clay,And on a rock He set my feet,Establishing my way.Late one evening last summer, I crossed the moor alone, picking my way between the pools and the peat hags. It’s not easy land. It just takes one bad step – a ...”

“... of the Bolshevik Autocracy (1952). As a publisher’s reader, he tried to prevent acceptance of John Erickson’s Soviet High Command. In the days of Times Literary Supplement anonymity Carr saw to it that he himself, Isaac Deutscher and, where needed, the wife of the Moscow journalist, Victor Louis, were employed as reviewers. He and Deutscher would ...”

“... he (or we) can handle, and solves some of it in his own fashion. This fashion doesn’t please John Brolin as Bigfoot, the crony/tormentor cop, who wanted more arrests. Katherine Waterston is very persuasive as Doc’s returning old flame, a beach girl who has got herself involved in an elaborate scheme to take a rich man’s money from him; and Jena ...”

“... of ‘God Save the Queen’ on the Thames, a rebellious parody of the Royal River Pageant. John Lydon won himself a place in British folklore. But for all the mock outrage over the Pistols’ anarchic antics and seditious lyrics, none of those involved – among them Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood – faced criminal charges. The performance was ...”