“... the belief systems of the lie-ee, putting a fictional character within a fabric of lies (as Henry James often does) is a great way of exploring the nature and the perceptual limitations of that person. Although that fictional technique was to become common in the novel, the most influential literary instance is Othello, a play which not coincidentally derives ...”

“... Kunkel found references to several possible projects: a big New York novel in the manner of James Joyce whom Mitchell admired above all other moderns; a life and times of a smart and funny woman who hung out with New Yorker writers and married one of them; a big personality piece about an Italian carter named Joe Cantalupo who was a fixture of the ...”

“... Harbor – even if that respect is filtered through the figures of Prewitt, Maggio and Warden from James Jones’s From Here to Eternity, a novel that plainly means a lot to her.) Over the years since 1963, Didion has won a high reputation as a political journalist/ commentator. I’ve never been quite as sure of that talent, if only because American politics ...”

“... in media savvy. He stood among the sureties and supporters: Tony Benn, Jemima Khan, Bianca Jagger, James Fox and Bella Freud, and the five or so young people I associated with WikiLeaks. We were led up to seats in the gallery they’d saved for friends. As soon as I sat down and looked down at the court I saw Esther Addley of the Guardian. She saw ...”

“... Caramanian Exile’ (which draws parallels between the British and Ottoman empires), or James Quinn on the travel memoirs and historical writing of the militant nationalist John Mitchel after he was transported to Bermuda, the reach of the British Empire matters as much as the comparative discussion. But Transitions is traditional in the way it ...”

“... from producers and strand editors to the controller and five commissioners. In the same period, James Boyle, Radio Four’s controller, had undertaken the dangerous procedure of restructuring his channel’s slots, which reduced the weekly 90-minute play to 60 minutes (at the same time moving it from Monday to Friday) and rationalised the daytime drama ...”

“... urge to correct also appeared in her letters: in 1973, for example, she wrote to Lowell that ‘James Merrill and I gave a joint reading – no, a sequential reading – at the YMHA.’ This enacting of a search for further precision and further care with terms was, in one way, a trick, a way of making the reader believe and trust a voice, or a way of ...”

“... off-key suggestion that the secret services should be recruiting in Bradford rather than St James’s (apparently on the grounds that immigrants would find it easier than Old Etonians to disguise themselves as Islamic extremists). But almost the oddest response has been our terrified certainty that there remains a plentiful supply of suicide pilots and ...”

“... she said in the tone she used for talking of publication, the Second Coming, and, now, the white fox fur as a 21st birthday present, ‘One of these days.’When she was nineteen, Frame left home for Dunedin Training College. Too timid to use the sanitary towel incinerator, she carried hers back to hide in the dressing-table drawers at her aunt’s ...”

“... report stated: ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction programmes.’ In July 2001, I heard Condoleezza Rice say: ‘We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.’ On 11 September 2001, six hours after the attacks, I heard that ...”

“... said. North Carolina was the birthplace of Billy Graham and three US presidents, Andrew Johnson, James Polk and Andrew Jackson, and also, among the twinkling lights out there, you could find the uncelebrated birthplace of Thomas Wolfe, the North Carolinian who wrote Look Homeward, Angel. As the truck got nearer the Waffle House, someone on the radio made the ...”