“... In​ the mid-1980s, before they moved to London and formed Suede, Brett Anderson and Mat Osman were in a band called Geoff. In his memoir, Coal Black Mornings, Anderson describes the ‘small-town wannabes’ rehearsing in his ‘dank, north-facing bedroom’ before going out to play gigs in other people’s bedrooms:Sometimes Mat and I would write stuff at his house ...”

“... of architects. Peter founded the influential firm Ahrends, Burton and Koralek (ABK) in 1960s London, and his grandfather, Bruno, was one of the principal designers of the White City estate in northern Berlin, one of a cluster of social housing projects from the Weimar era to be given a Unesco World Heritage listing. It is a commonplace that modern ...”

“... mob, ready to face private enterprise, the gang life of Civvy Street, when the Kray Twins ruled London – or so the timorous newspapers claimed. John Dickson, a former member of the Krays’ firm, has somehow produced a well-written book, Murder without Conviction. ‘We looked like any normal businessmen in our pin-striped suits,’ he says, describing ...”

“... familiar with financial crime. Dave, a detective sergeant, is the team leader. He’s a handsome jack-the-lad in his late thirties, tanned from a couple of weeks in Spain and wearing his cuffs and ASP slung under his armpit as though he were carrying a firearm in a holster. He says he’s hopeless at maths and doesn’t have any experience of economic crime ...”

“... is an attempt, 17 years on, to gather up the tatters of a wake held at University College London. The unnamed participant touches on a more general diffidence about how to remember or appraise William Coldstream. He has a niche in accounts of the 1930s art world, as co-founder of the short-lived but influential ‘Euston Road School’, and a slot in ...”

“... what might have been. He was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou on 25 June 1963 in East Finchley, London, to Jack Panos – a Greek Cypriot restaurant owner who had anglicised his name – and his English wife, Lesley Harrison. Georgios (‘Yorg’ to the family but mispronounced as ‘Yog’ by Andrew Ridgeley, whose ...”

“... that Groucho Marx refused to join. On the contrary, it supplied the ground for his retort, after Jack Warner threatened a copyright infringement action for A Night in Casablanca (Warner Bros had produced the original Casablanca), that Groucho, Chico and Harpo would countersue Jack, Al and Harry for stealing ...”

“... the showbiz mores of a bewildering galaxy of cartoon characters – Silver Anderson, Mannon Cable, Jack Python, Jade Johnson, Whitney Valentine – lurks an italicised sub-plot. This tells of an unnamed victim of sexual abuse who falls into the quite plausible routine of torching her abusers to a charred crisp in their own homes. When Ms Collins moves to end ...”

“... obsessions’. So, in The Rivals, the tempestuous relationship between the swashbuckling Jack Absolute and his irascible father is of course a direct dramatisation of the relationship between Richard and his father (as, in The School for Scandal, the balance between the wastrel Charles and the puritan Joseph echoes that between Richard and his ...”

“... the murderers whose reputation has stood the test of time are the following: Dr Palmer of Rugeley, Jack the Ripper, Neill Cream, Mrs Maybrick, Dr Crippen, Seddon, Joseph Smith, Armstrong, and Bywaters and Thompson. Orwell discounts Jack the Ripper as an altogether special artisan of murder, but of the remaining eight, six ...”

“... had finally found its voice, ‘medieval bodies’ have become such a rich field of inquiry that Jack Hartnell can use them to ground a History of Everything for the common reader: ‘life, death and art in the Middle Ages’. Hartnell is an art historian, so his book is copiously illustrated. But it’s also a history of medicine and much more, treating ...”

“... seen her in almost a year – they often lived apart, and she’d been seeing a man called Jack – they immediately fall into talking as they always did, with their own familiar banter. ‘Did you know that flange means “undesirable vagina”?’ Lily asks. ‘I’ve missed you,’ Finn says. Finn decides they should go on a road trip, and ...”

“... shapes in comic-book colours, with daring names like Volcano, Spitfire, Chrysanthemum Fountain and Jack in the Box.After an eternity of waiting, the big night arrived. We gathered at the end of the garden, Dad with a torch stomping about in his duffel coat, arranging things. The small bonfire was lit, and we gazed into the flames licking round the Guy like a ...”

“... also – overwhelmingly – English. In contrast to the Northern Irish, the Scots and residents of London (all of whom voted Remain), and the UK as a whole (which voted to Leave by a mere 4 per cent), England-without-London voted to go by 55.4 per cent to 44.6 per cent. The contrast with the last vote on Europe, in 1975, was ...”

“... French wine were washed up at Preston in Sussex, Lady Shirley asked her steward to send them up to London ‘so we may drink it, which will end the dispute with the commissions of the customs’.When goods went missing it was always easy to blame the people who actually heaved them from the sea. Sir John Killigrew, who held the right to wrecks on the Lizard ...”