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“... of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel,’ he wrote. His essay cheers young writers on, pushing them, against English habits of gossip and insularity, towards an organic wholeness in their work. He argues for fiction that is unafraid of new subject matter and multitudinous perspectives, advising writers to try ‘to catch the ...”

“... they looked like. She made things in plasticine – heads, flowers – and drew and painted from a young age. When she was 16 she enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, where she studied illustration and textile design and took life drawing classes with Bernard Meninsky, who was known for his heavy black charcoal lines (Cooke preferred a 3H ...”

“... who uses fiction philosophically rather than someone who, let’s say, just writes it. A glance at Andrew Brown’s excellent translation of The Wall and/or at the French text shows us at once what we have been missing, and the glance very quickly turns into a long look.* It’s hard to stop reading. The title of the book is that of the opening story, set in ...”

“... came to mind some weeks ago when most of the newspapers were full of the libel action between Andrew Neil of the Sunday Times and Peregrine Worsthorne of the Sunday Telegraph. It came to be widely accepted that this trial represented a clash between an Old Britain personified by Mr Worsthorne and a New Britain exemplified by the man Private Eye calls ...”

“... of a far more illustrious progeny), going on to J.R. Cozens (who went mad) and Girtin (who died young), and eventually reaching a triumphant climax with the work of J.M.W. Turner. The Great Age of British Watercolours 1750-1880, on view at the Royal Academy until 12 April, sets out to recycle this rather tired old story in a manner that remains remarkably ...”

“... seem strange. Hundreds of people are heading in my direction. Some are running. Mums are clutching young kids and looking over their shoulders fearfully. No cars or cabs, but police are everywhere. In the distance I see a huge black blob disfiguring the sky. Maybe a thunderstorm’s brewing? I step in front of a fleeing office worker: ‘Excuse me, but has ...”

“... used to be a key term in the civilising process: finishing schools taught young ladies to walk with a book balanced on their head. Keep that head up and tuck that tail in! Bumsters from ‘Nihilism’, S/S 1994 ‘Highland Rape’, A/W 1995 Shaun Leane’s spine corset for ‘Untitled’, S/S 1998 ‘The Widows of Culloden’, A/W ...”

“... had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead.’ This magical piece of gynaecological imagery makes Andrew Morton’s book almost worth reading, but it might not be enough to make it worth buying. Diana is constantly quoted, the key phrase being, ‘As Diana says ...’ But it is never clear to whom she is speaking, or even when. It gives her a mythic ...”

“... but was nevertheless a team effort. They were both furious. Diana’s response was to talk to Andrew Morton, whose book, Diana, Her True Story, came out the following year and marked the beginning of the public War of the Waleses. Junor has known her present subject since 1987, when her first biography of Charles resulted in a writ from ...”

“... of stone that play a major part in Painting in Stone. The marble floor of the Chapel of St Andrew in Westminster Cathedral.  University of Oxford, Museum of Natural History First, there are the alabasters, which are relatively soft. These are now divided into gypsum alabaster and calcite or onyx alabaster. Calcite alabaster from Egypt, commonly a ...”

“... the one hand, extreme paucity of paraphrasable content; on the other, extreme subtlety of nuance. Andrew Frisardi illustrates the first difficulty rather painfully when, in the introduction to this new Selected Poems, he attempts to say what ‘Mattina’ ‘literally means’: ‘something like “I turn luminous in an immensity of spaces.”’ But ...”

“... next Prime Minister but three’. But the mind’s eye can be wrong – Johnson’s biographer, Andrew Gimson, records that Boris was a quiet boy who had hearing difficulties – and it may be that the reason we can readily conceive Johnson aged seven is that the public persona of Johnson aged 47 is so irrepressibly boys-will-be-boys. With Livingstone the ...”

“... in dire financial straits (Chekhov knew them) who pin their hopes on a shrewd and successful young lawyer friend. He will marry their daughter and somehow get them out of the mess. Naturally cynical and self-absorbed, the young man is nonetheless sentimentally attracted to the daughter. But it would be a ...”

“... Penguin of 1962, The New Poetry, selected and introduced by A. Alvarez. Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion are well aware that there is something comically factitious about the stance that has to be adopted by each new spokesman on the poetry scene – ‘we are not,’ they say, ‘the first anthologists this century to have made such a claim.’ Indeed ...”

“... its contrived banality, Armstrong’s ‘small step’ is in every dictionary of quotations, and Andrew Smith is of the remarkable opinion that the First Sentence is ‘one of the most memorable lines ever offered the English language’ and ‘as famous as anything Shakespeare wrote’. Of the 12 Moon-walkers, only Schmitt was a scientist, and none of them ...”