“... Eliot’s judgment that Lewis was the greatest English prose stylist of the century. Others, like Anthony Quinton, have called him the worst one. All are right from their own point of view, if we accept that Lewis is a writer who either appeals or does not, but Eliot’s verdict is interesting in two ways. Eliot really did warm to Lewis’s ideas, and the way ...”

“... do. At another point ‘he leaped from the raft in a flash, went off to salute the statue of Saint Anthony, who was captain of the regiment, then started coming on to girls all over town.’ (The statue of Saint Anthony of Padua, credited with saving Rio de Janeiro from French invasion in 1710, was given a salary and made ...”

“... down, Robert Lowells (d. 1977, with the Collected Poems coming next year) are a good buy; stock in Anthony Burgess (d. 1993) should probably be held for a year or two; Borgeses (d. 1986) will surge once the editing and republishing are sorted out; James Merrills (d. 1995) should be sold now and rebought later; Becketts (d. 1989) look a little iffy (though ...”

“... as a tatou, as well as a toucan sitting on a branch and another ‘byrde of America’, possibly a blond-crested woodpecker from Amazonia. In 1569, Henry VIII’s former barber-surgeon, Edmund Harman, erected a monument to his family in the parish church at Burford in Oxfordshire, with his sixteen children kneeling at the base beneath four naked ...”

“... don’t necessarily know which is the true one. Peter was then a tall, rosy-cheeked young man with blond hair flopping over his forehead, like an overgrown schoolboy, and I thought if I had been a Russian I would have been inclined to show him my dissident face, if only to avoid disappointing him. His expulsion from the Soviet Union at first seemed to him like ...”

“... no fewer than five biographies since 1995 – four of them (by Klaus Harpprecht, Ronald Hayman, Anthony Heilbut, Donald Prater) published in that single year. The German version of Kurzke’s book appeared in 1999. Six volumes of Mann’s essays were published between 1993 and 1997, and the ten-volume edition of the diaries was completed in 1995. The ...”

“... lies not least with the actors: Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn are no match for Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins. Haneke’s American remake of Funny Games, even closer to the original movie in story and shot arrangement, is also inferior, and again the actors are a primary reason. The villains aren’t quite right in their social demeanour: Funny Games is a ...”

“... of Humour’ is no less cheerfully disgusted by his own odour: ‘This forked, strange-scented, blond-skinned gut-bag, with its two bright rolling marbles with which it sees, bull’s-eyes full of mockery and madness, is my stalking-horse.’ That is Lewis going for it, as he was inclined to do. Take this sentence from ‘Enemy of the Stars’: ‘They ...”

“... It seemed to be mainly Ikea catalogues, the cover showing an exquisitely lit arrangement of blond, cheerful furniture. The Ikea ideal did not include any obvious area for the sorting of mail. As the greasy slap of the catalogues’ plastic covers hitting the counter became monotonous, my eye kept being drawn to a row of Smurfs balanced on the copper ...”

“... signed up for one, and on average only two-fifths of the people at risk do sign up. Besides, as Anthony Perry, flood-risk manager for Gloucestershire, explained, the key to the July floods was the water pouring off the Cotswolds, and the agency doesn’t give warnings for those small, nippy rivers. ‘The limitations are small watercourses, where they ...”

“... Oklahoma?’ ‘Yes. We saw it when we were engaged.’ Extraordinary to think of it, the dashing blond boy he had been. ‘Was that Cecil Beaton?’ ‘No idea. Never liked the fellow. Green shoes.’ ‘Smelled delicious.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘A book. I borrowed it.’ ‘Dead, I suppose.’ ‘Who?’ ‘The Beaton fellow.’ ‘Oh yes. Everybody’s ...”