“... by a real spy, had helped to contribute to American success in the war. Perhaps they had. Christopher Benfey tells the story extremely well, with a light touch and a lot of scholarship. He likes and admires Crane but is judicious about the quality of his work and does not try to claim too much for it. The stunning success of The Red Badge of ...”

“... had first seen Monsieur et Madame Tourenbois at Bacchus Marsh High School, or at least a black and white reproduction in Foundation of the Modern.’ The painting has recently fallen under suspicion, Marlene tells Butcher, and she has come to authenticate it: her husband has inherited the droit moral, which means that he is the one ‘who gets to say ...”

“... commissions by the time he was 21. In his admirable introduction to the exhibition catalogue, Christopher Brown writes that ‘it is impossible to over-emphasise the impact of Rubens’s new style on the young Van Dyck’ – the style, that is, of the pictures Rubens painted after his return from Italy in 1608. The demand for Rubens’s work went far ...”

“... not until the following June that Susan Parashar realised that the man who had frightened her was Christopher Clunis, on trial at the Old Bailey for murdering Jonathan Zito on the northbound Piccadilly Line platform at Finsbury Park tube station on 17 December 1992. According to his solicitor, Christopher Clunis, who was ...”

“... exploiting labourers (often shanghaied) who were little better than slaves even before black labour was introduced. There were none of the radical gentry and ministers who formed a respected élite in New England: only get-rich-quick adventurers, each mistrusting the other. Virginian gentry culture was a blend of ‘competitiveness, individualism ...”

“... however, professors of literature who think we should rather go along with or encourage change. Christopher Ricks writes on clichés, contesting the common view that their prevalence is a sign of decadence: since we can’t beat them, he says, we ought to join them, or rather change them and use them in surprising ways, like the poets Geoffrey Hill and Bob ...”

“... was any different. There, in its portable transparent box, was the earliest relic of the Book. In Christopher de Hamel’s history, the Rylands fragment is reproduced life-size in the final chapter: life-size but not, to my faulty memory at least, very true to its actual appearance. In the reproduction the papyrus is a kind of drab olive; in the Rylands, with ...”

“... is an unfortunate and an inferior. For all his ‘tall, fair-haired, pristine skull’, he suffers black-outs and headaches and periods of dizziness; indeed, hunger and pallor and loss seem to threaten him with becoming ‘transparent’. I cannot begin to say which predicament is closer to my father’s, Edgar’s or ‘ours’ – or if they are both equally ...”

“... of him in a sketchbook. On another occasion, in March 1970, a few of us, including his friend Christopher Isherwood, went to his rooms. I remember the affectionate banter between Forster and Isherwood, and their contrasting hairstyles – Forster’s a rather unruly, fine white mop, Isherwood’s a razor-sharp crew cut, on which Forster commented, asking ...”

“... Kettle’s Yard – they in turn patronised other artists. To their house in Cumbria they invited Christopher Wood, who hadn’t managed to sell much, though Winifred, never less than enthusiastic, said of him: ‘Here was England’s first painter. His vision is true, his grasp real, his power is life itself.’ Ben and Kit would go out walking together with ...”

“... remembered my name without making a patronising show of it, and stayed to tell a good story about Christopher Hill and John Sparrow, and of how he’d been the unwitting agent of a quarrel between them, while ignoring an ambitious and possessive American professor who kept yelling ‘Eye-zay-ah! Eye-zay-ah!’ from across the room. (‘Yes,’ he murmured at ...”

“... be entirely and comprehensively covered by television. At just after midnight on 3 March 1991, a black motorist in a clapped-out station wagon failed to stop on the 210 Freeway when ordered over by the California Highway Patrol. According to subsequent police reports, Rodney King’s 1988 Hyundai reached speeds of over 115 mph: an allegation which caused ...”

“... world-famous Sixties film director, and Miranda’s mother’s arrival, dressed in nothing but her black silk underwear, at a stuffy christening party in a London flat. (This is in 1948, long before the age of the Kissogram girl.) Even in London the presence of Serafine, the Everard family’s Caribbean nanny and a storyteller with her own brand of ...”

“... is odd, because swooping down on him is a monstrous eagle bolted together from shards of gleaming black metal, its features convulsed into a mask of malevolence, its talons poised to snatch the orb. The young man is the archangel Gabriel, newly engaged as patron and symbol of the Magyar nation. The eagle (though it bears an uncanny resemblance to the bird ...”

“... identification of one’s own point of view with objectivity. And, thence, with authority. When Christopher Ricks’s T.S. Eliot and Prejudice was published at the end of last year, it attracted more than its fair share of dim-witted commentary, but perhaps the most stupid moment occurred in an otherwise well-meaning review by Dannie Abse in the Listener (1 ...”