“... and renewing his decent grief.’ At the Coronation he notes the judges like red caterpillars, a little boy playing with his sword until his mother takes it away, urchins playing scratch cricket in a side-street as the crowd disperses; he saves his most withering asides for Archbishop Temple, so old that he can’t rise after doing homage, and, unable to ...”

“... about people having these kinds of readings of your work?TP: There was once a conference about me. Little me. It was in Rouen. All in French. Luckily I speak French. Although I understood French perfectly I couldn’t understand a word they said. It was in the middle of the high structuralist times. It was amazing. The gibberish. They took a text that my ...”

“... Little has changed in the old city of Harar, secluded in the hills of south-eastern Ethiopia. The rusting military hardware still sits beside the road from Dire Dawa, as it did when I last passed by six years ago. The waiters still move like somnambulists through the drowsy lobby of the Ras Hotel. The spider’s web of twisting cobbled streets; the tall boys playing table football in a corner of the main square; the recumbent figures browsing on sprigs of khat; the beautiful eyes that flash suddenly out of shadowy interiors – it is all much as I remember it ...”

“... the second one, while doubtless a consolation to him, was a pinched and meagre affair that brought little joy to his partner. Furthermore, Hardy was a lifelong philanderer. Not a heartless philanderer: on the contrary, his heart was only too easily touched, by a wide variety of objects – humble admirers as well as society ladies, for whom he had a great ...”

“... through a mysterious server somewhere in China (the actual means don’t really matter; as Arthur C. Clarke put it, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’), has found a way to make contact electronically with the past. But not with their own past, because at the moment of contact, a new timeline – known to people ...”

“... some equilibrium – not a matter of forgiveness – was regained between the two friends. When Arthur Martin, the investigator, rang the bell, they were talking about Cézanne. Blunt was disgraced, Long more grievously hurt, and Straight, after enjoying some quite respectful attention from the mass media, was eventually rubbished by the Sunday Times as ...”

“... levels – Johann Strauss’s as well as Arnold Schoenberg’s, the Schnitzel’s as well as Arthur Schnitzler’s and Sigmund Freud’s – was bound to result in an attempt to explain it all, or most of it, or that part of it that has a hypnotic effect on the investigator himself. The question then naturally arises how far he has fallen victim to the ...”

“... In those days five piastres would buy at least three falafels. I stopped to pick up one of the little paperback volumes and, leafing through it, said contemptuously: ‘Five piastres for this?’ ‘No,’ came the quick reply, ‘take them all for five piastres.’ I ended up with a copy for half a piastre, and realised when speaking with my father about ...”

“... tends to invert present and past, effect and cause. There’s a chapter that begins: Hermine and Arthur, his parents. He himself, Ludwig, the firstborn. His sister Elisabeth, married to Ernst. Their daughter Doris, his niece. Then his wife Anna. And now the children: Elliot and baby Elisabeth, named for his sister. This refrain (for that’s what it ...”

“... put his arms around Freda. ‘“I’m glad,” he said.’ One afternoon, Lewis read Aykroyd Arthur Koestler’s article on Richard Hillary, the fighter pilot and author of The Last Enemy. On 25 May Lewis had written to Gweno: ‘What twaddle of Koestler’s about him being wilfully led to a fascinating death!’ Now his voice cracked as he came to a ...”

“... in 1897 (it’s likely that he also administered the substance to his friends W.B. Yeats and Arthur Symons), instead tended to focus on its visual effects. Ellis described ‘the brilliance, delicacy and variety of the colours’ and ‘their lovely and various textures’. Peyote reached Europe in tandem with the X-ray, cinema and electric lights, Jay ...”

“... asked. And Mosley then recited the names of those in high places who were opposed to the war. Little did Mosley know how justified his case was. For instance, on 28 May 1940 the War Cabinet discussed the question whether the British should appeal to Mussolini as an intermediary with Hitler. Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, was keen on this or as keen ...”

“... the adults achieve anarchy. Because there are jokes on every page the bleak facts take a little time to emerge; and the very excellence of the television acting tended to make one miss them. Consider Adrian’s lot: his father is made redundant, and gets a job from the Manpower Services Commission cleaning a canal bank which every morning is strewn ...”

“... thinks) disadvantageous terms. What keeps her going is concern for her ‘boys’. The elder, Arthur, graduates as a tax-inspector, immune from call-up, and marries his landlady’s daughter in Ulster. Cliff, the younger, something of an ‘odd boy’ who writes poetry when depressed, is called up and shunted from one arm of the Services to another. The ...”

“... covers four generations and virtually the whole of the 20th century. First we learn of Clarence Arthur Wilmot, a Presbyterian minister in Paterson, New Jersey. Like many a minister in generations earlier than his, Clarence is undergoing a painful loss of faith, brought on by reading Robert Ingersoll’s Some Mistakes of Moses and other scornful and ...”