“... to a lyric, extends it, burnishes it before finally giving it away. She was the coloratura soprano Anna Moffo’s favourite singer. ‘Ten Cents a Dance’, a working girl’s anthem, is from Love Me or Leave Me (1955), a biopic about the jazz singer Ruth Etting which in uncanny ways also tells Doris’s own story, down to the manager-turned-husband called ...”

“... on the Lower East Side, Barney (as friends called him) was the oldest child of Abraham and Anna Naiman, Jews from Poland who had arrived in New York five years before. Abraham was a broker of menswear, and the family of six rode the ups and downs of his business. While Abraham was committed to Zionism, Anna was ...”

“... hard not to be reminded of the fraudulent blood-testing corporation Theranos, whose board included Sam Nunn, a former head of the US Senate’s Armed Services Committee, the former secretary of state George Schultz, the former secretaries of defence Bill Perry and Jim Mattis, and even Henry Kissinger, none of whom had any knowledge of haematology or ...”

“... Terry Malloy, and accepted it with good grace. Then came 18 years of turmoil, a bad marriage (to Anna Kashfi, Christian’s mother), a mounting dread of his own work, and a need to sabotage projects. He scorned Hollywood, but started living there. He disdained phony projects, but took the money, all the while declaring that the entertainment medium was ...”

“... warmed to her. (How couldn’t I? Talking to cats, watching Inspector Morse repeats, reading Anna Kavan? She’s stolen my life!) If M Train had stayed there, as an unlikely TV addict’s pillow book, I would have been wholly won over. In her 1979 song ‘Dancing Barefoot’, Smith sang of ‘grave visitations’. If we take M Train at its word, Smith ...”

“... the ‘feebleminded’: These were no leaders but they were first into the dark on Dog Fox Field: Anna who rocked her head, and Paul who grew big and yet giggled small, Irma who looked Chinese, and Hans who knew his world as a fox knows a field. Insisting that the dignity of persons is not based on intellect or achievement, Murray can be astonishingly good at ...”

“... they frequently acted like comic-strip actors themselves. When Baby Face Nelson killed FBI agent Sam Cowley, FBI Special Agent Melvin Purvis rushed to Cowley’s deathbed where, he told reporters, he had taken ‘an oath in Cowley’s blood’ to avenge him, helpfully providing the press with the headline quote they wanted: IF IT’S THE LAST THING I ...”

“... making for the stairs. ‘I was holding the door for Eddie Daffarn to come downstairs, and for Sam, the son of my neighbour.’ No one had woken Sheila, the elderly lady who lived on that floor, and Sam had to leave without his father, who suffered from dementia and was refusing to move. ‘Where is your dad?’ Hamid ...”