“... postcards’, vilely offensive letters, and threaten to have people duffed up. When Anthony d’Offay closed a show of his two days early, an envelope of shit arrived through d’Offay’s letterbox. In one version of the philosophy of the self, we all operate at some point on a line between the twin poles of episodicism and narrativism. The ...”

“... visions (such as Skinner’s novel Walden Two, from 1948) as well as dystopian ones (such as Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, from 1962).Elements of behaviourism became enmeshed with psychoanalysis in mid-20th-century America via the work of the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, whose theoretical approach dominated the profession there between the Second ...”

“... observed. William Rothenstein thought him ‘armed and armoured, like a tank, ready to cross any country, however rough and hostile’. He certainly had a genius for pugnacity, no doubt partly encouraged by the example Hulme set: ‘a very rude and truculent man’ in Lewis’s judgment, than which there could be no higher praise. (‘He needed to ...”

“... is remembered and recorded. The work of the architects (Caesar Augustus Long, William Hunt, A.G. Cross) responsible for its development and redevelopment is acknowledged. More recent exploitations of a building denied any proper function since the 1980s are ignored. No notices commemorate ‘Whirlygig’ club nights when New Age ravers packed the Assembly ...”

“... an estimated 500,000 files by the mid-1950s, was organised according to an elaborate system of cross-referencing between Personal Files, Subject Files and Y Boxes, designed to separate highly sensitive files from general access (all suspected spies, as well as defectors, were Y-Boxed). An officer could only obtain a Y Box – marked with a yellow card ...”

“... notable because the Bad Thief is depicted as fat, a great beer gut sagging down from the Cross. Everyone – the Holy Family apart – is grotesque, while Christ himself is so idealised he belongs in a different painting, crucified against a blue and white sky that looks like a map of the world. His thighs are concealed by dancing draperies, and ...”

“... maybe a fable, about a Displaced Persons camp somewhere in Germany at the end of the war. Red Cross and UNRRA ladies are interviewing survivors from the concentration camps. ‘Well, Mr Lemberger, and where would you like to go now?’ ‘New Zealand.’ ‘New Zealand? But that’s awfully far away!’ ‘Far away from what?’ To me as a wartime ...”

“... Dory consists of pastiches of Bowie’s musical heroes of the 1960s – John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Anthony Newley, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground. Which would make Ziggy Stardust the beautiful butterfly that emerged from the chrysalis. Paul Trynka begins his biography with a description of Bowie’s performance of ‘Starman’ on Top of the Pops on 5 July ...”

“... who can presume to say? ‘Tradition is kindred’: perhaps that is true; perhaps a great cross-roaded mind has blundered: ‘nadir to nadir’, riches to rags; in the temple of order decapitated stone figures struck from niches; mobbed cattle with their drool and ordure; at their hooves dogs. So what do you make of that? Salamis was the famous naval ...”

“... Victoria King, who was 71, and her daughter Alexandra Atala, on the 20th floor, never made it out. Anthony Disson, 65, a former bin man and Fulham fan, left it very late before trying to get out of his flat. ‘We used to go “totting” together,’ his son, Lee, said. ‘You know, scrap iron. He had a big horse called Lady and a little Shetland’ – he ...”

“... Reynolds being properly respectful to a big influence on Bowie that other critics shy away from: Anthony Newley, a Light Entertainment renaissance man – actor, singer, songwriter – who trod the thin line between shameless MOR schmaltz and nervy conceptual daring. This is a great lost period of pop history, with its dozens of little papers and ...”

“... but the chapters themselves unassigned; my guess is that the survey of the queer scene is by Anthony Blond, also the book’s publisher. Its tone is both hip and cagey, totally au fait with bars, clubs and cruising spots that the writer cannot yet name: it’s a tantalising guide, innuendo just short of the really useful statement. On the north side of ...”

“... which dominated Beckett’s own household. They were bohemians. They gave parties at which, as Anthony Cronin noted in his biography of Beckett, ‘people sat on the floor and afterwards quite possibly slept on it.’ No one among the Sinclairs minded Beckett staying in bed all morning and having no worldly ambitions and many vague and high-toned ...”

“... held firm. By 2 March, the attack had been exhausted. Hossein Kharrazi was one of the last to cross a pontoon that had been thrown back across the marsh. As he went, his right arm was shot to bits. He shouted at the men ahead of him: ‘Go on! Don’t come back for me!’ At least twelve thousand Iranians were killed during Kheibar – the number may have ...”

“... I marry you.The embrace of the other person is haunted by the isolation it’s supposed to dispel. Cross rhyme (‘years’/‘bears’, ‘weight’/‘fate’) locks us into a fatalistic echo, as the beloved, brought close, becomes an almost unbearable burden. The clunky repetition of ‘body’ weighs down the lines, just as Schwartz imagined Gertrude would ...”