“... more manacled by the observances of etiquette.’ On less grand occasions they met the painter David, an Englishman who had befriended Charlotte Corday at her trial, and Charles James Fox – ‘rather lourd and maladroit’. With the help of a young American, Margaret and Katherine visited Tom Paine, ‘up half a dozen flights of stairs, in a remote part ...”

“... can go to Galway if you make a case to me, you old sausage, just don’t get lost or overspend. David Mellor, the Guardian’s new arts columnist, will not be put to the trouble or embarrassment of contributing to such meetings. They have been discontinued. I know why, but would rather talk about the matter than write about it. Nobody – I hope – can ...”

“... wakened by the growl of thunder and lightning.’ Into this ghostly idyll come two men: first, David Caravaggio, a friend of Hana’s father from before the war in Toronto; and later, a young sapper, Kirpal Singh, nicknamed Kip – a Sikh from the Punjab, who has been detailed to clear the area around the villa of mines. Caravaggio and Kip materialise like ...”

“... copy had been spiked pleaded to be granted at least ‘an E for Effort’, she got instead an ‘F for Fuck Off’. According to Shawcross, Murdoch loved this kind of thing until Establishment disapproval began to suggest to him that something nasty might be done to curb tabloid excesses by way of a change in the law. He then hosed down his over-ebullient ...”

“... that such facilities should be mothballed overnight. I have been reading Magnus Linklater and David Leigh’s book on the Westland affair.* One crucial passage, a quotation from an unnamed source, comes at the top of page 143: The Prime Minister knew about the leak. She was pleased it had been done. There was a meeting between Brittan and her after the ...”

“... verse translations, a long biography of Haig, a short and oddly memorable study of the King David of the Bible, and one novel, Operation Heartbreak, about a clandestine war operation in which a body, purporting to be that of a British officer carrying secret documents, was dumped off the coast of Spain to deceive the Germans. As a singleton novel it is ...”

“... spontaneity, I hope, can be detected. The influential dialogues of our culture, from Plato’s to David Sylvester’s with Francis Bacon, have been the most conscientiously elaborated, while verbatim reporting essentially belongs to journalism. Robert Craft’s industry, dedication and literary skill not only make more palatable the two books under ...”

“... they include Jeremy Tradescant, who brings us up to date on his sister – but Charles’s lover, David Matheson, is a sad, complex figure, movingly portrayed. A passage of intimate feeling can follow a scene of black farce. It’s hard to say how these extremes are harmonised. Perhaps the historical perspective provided by Fish’s diaries permits of certain ...”

“... of Thomas Gray, Allen Ramsay and Oliver Goldsmith, casually mentions that he does not need to read David Hume on miracles, and obliquely compares his own work with that of Milton? There is a paradox here: the more Bewick strove to establish his credentials as an artist, the more apparent it becomes that he was not the bon sauvage he was portrayed to ...”

“... to 2 p.m. MPs had to come from their constituencies a.m. and get back to evening meetings p.m.! David Stod-dart (Swindon) had the foresight to see that a three-hour debate would keep out most backbenchers, and called a division suggesting it should be a five-hour debate. Defeated! The end-result was two hours and 40 minutes. With four Front Bench speeches ...”

“... Irish. Hartnett confesses himself to be ‘obsessed by the work and mind of Daibhi O Bruadair’ (David Broderick or Brouder), the 17th-century poet from the Limerick area who witnessed the tragic sequence of events which destroyed his native cultural habitat: ‘the Popish Plot, the coming of Cromwell, the battle of the Boyne, the Treaty of Limerick and its ...”

“... participate in it. Still, he has signalled a wish to defect from Offa’s camp, and a reading of David Norbrook’s recent, excellent study of political poetry, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, should make him aware of the necessity for that ...”

“... of Scotland. I feel like a film reviewer who has started the week with an Ealing comedy or one of David Lean’s novel-adaptations (cutting out all the messy, sissy bits) and then has to plough through a set of desperate cast-of-thousands horror-movies. No doubt, Don Bloch and Denis Johnson are properly concerned about leprosy in Africa and the dangers of ...”

“... where he lapsed into a state of knee-knocking shock. Another Englishman, the Lancastrian David Lloyd, was hit a terrifying blow in the groin by Jeff Thomson. The following summer, I too hit him in the same region. I saw him later, ice packs clasped to his nether regions, and asked after his health. ‘After Thommo it were a pleasure,’ he ...”

“... my own – therefore very dear.’ On another occasion he remarks wryly, writing to his friend David Meldrum (7 January 1902), on how excellent his health is when he is producing inferior work. The last has been a disastrous year for me. I have wasted – not idled – it away, tinkering here, tinkering there – a little on Rescue, more on that fatal ...”