“... with an ANC-ruled South Africa, back within the Commonwealth. If the book has a hero it is Sir John Maud, the British high commissioner who advised in 1960 that since a black government must come to power one day, Britain must ‘keep faith’ with the black majority, while at the same time not antagonising the National Party government to no good ...”

“... a fictional symposium that ran in the paper between 1822 and 1835. The author of the Noctes was John Wilson, who constructed dialogues between his own alter ego (‘Christopher North’) and that of Hogg (‘the Shepherd’). The Shepherd gets the best lines – better, some have suggested, than anything Hogg ever wrote – but he is also made to look a ...”

“... the museum after its redesign by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. In the New Yorker John Updike likened its presence to ‘an invisible cathedral’, but it is closer to an abstract palace. The main access is now nearer Sixth than Fifth Avenue, and you enter from either 53rd or 54th Street into a lobby, paced with white columns, that cuts all ...”

“... Minds have been made up about John Updike. A typical review will begin by grudgingly acknowledging the brilliance of his ‘style’ – as if Updike’s style were a set of dainty curlicues, and not his manner of thought – before complaining about his misogyny, his conservatism, his theological bad faith, the gratuitousness of his language ...”

“... minister has come to office with so little experience of government or anything else. Fettes, St John’s College, Oxford, Lincoln’s Inn and a few years on the opposition benches in the House of Commons are a preparation of limited value for going into the ring in the world of lies and violence with the likes of Dick Cheney, Gerry Adams, Vladimir ...”

“... true church’, but not ‘the unspotted lambs of the Lord’ as the Elizabethan chronicler John Stow claimed (this was another slur: Stow had Catholic sympathies).Puritanism has long commanded historical attention. Collinson helped put the politics back in, working with the grain of the ‘new’ social and cultural histories of the 1980s. What emerged ...”

“... repurposed for a documentary). The new 3D version of the movie released in time for the centenary took its gross earnings above two billion dollars. In the movie, the 101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater, who was 17 when she survived the sinking, learns that a 1996 expedition had been looking for a necklace, the Heart of the Ocean, that went down with the ship ...”

“... that belonged to the fairy king. On his way home he was tripped up by a couple of fairies, who took the ball and vanished. Elidyr was never again able to find his way into fairyland, but in later life he was quizzed by the bishop of St David’s about his experiences and claimed to be able to remember fragments of the fairies’ language, which according ...”

“... hands of the murderous and unstable emperor; they would have remembered the public rioting that took place when Nero replaced her by marrying his mistress Poppaea (whose beauty, according to one of the play’s choral odes, rivalled that of Helen of Troy; Octavia, meanwhile, is portrayed as a model of virtue, but no one mentions her appearance). They would ...”

“... Rita Hayworth, Natalie Wood, Marlene Dietrich (drawn while posing, clearly), Simon Callow, John Gielgud and Ian McKellen. (My husband, David, incidentally, is related to Dietrich – on his mother’s side.) The screenwriters don’t include Dorothy Parker, although I’m fairly certain that Bachardy once did her portrait in black and ...”

“... you kidnapped me from my house, in my country, and sent me to Jordan for torture, and then took me from Jordan to Bagram, and I’m still worse than the people you captured with guns in their hands?’ ‘Yes, you are. You’re very smart! To me, you meet all the criteria of a top terrorist. When I check the terrorist check list, you pass with a very ...”

“... a cumbersome Edwardian three-seater decked out in Sanderson chintz, became my island of retreat. I took the sunniest room in the house for my study and since Raphael had no television, I rented one from Rediffusion on the Bethnal Green Road. It came on a stand and could be wheeled discreetly to one side. Draped with a dark red velvet curtain, it lent a ...”

“... first Trainspotting movie, and Irvine Welsh still cannae act to save his life. In the original, he took the part of Mikey Forrester, the Muirhouse-based purveyor of inferior opiate products, the one who sold the suppositories Mark Renton shat out in the bookies’ toilet. And he was delightful at it, smirking and giggling in his Wattie Buchan T-shirt, like the ...”

“... unsustainable co-ordination between businesses and governments. In 1931, as global depression took hold and prices fell, the governor of Oklahoma shut down oil wells by military force, declaring that ‘the price of oil must go to $1 a barrel; now don’t ask me any more damned questions.’ Price stability grows from the barrel of a gun, not the ...”

“... five hours’. The Lodge, on 3rd Avenue between East 53rd and 54th Streets, opened in 1952. It took its cue from Shaw’s, also on 3rd, which according to one former patron, was ‘a narrow little bar that gave you the feeling you were inside a bus … You would come in the front door and the bar was full of filthy, dirty, scuzzy paraphernalia hanging from ...”