“... the double-goers double into triple- and quadruple-goers. So the jacket of the English edition of Brian Moore’s latest (tenth) novel, the blurb of which is superior to that of the American edition in that it doesn’t betray the plot, is inferior in that it limns the daguerrotype and then splits the face down the middle, tonsorially and sartorially, as ...”

“... impulse. For the Independent, the knock-on was an ‘outrageous’ act. For the England hooker, Brian Moore, it was a bad case of cheating. For me, it was something anyone might have done, perhaps, for god’s sake, hoping for a catch. A penalty was awarded. But there was talk of a penalty try, and some moralists would probably have preferred a ...”

“... mother dear.’ Hinde, who thirty years later is still a writer of distinct goodness, akin to Brian Moore in his lucid patience and justice, has done nothing better. To bring out three books on the same day, as Robert Lowell knew when he promulgated History, For Lizzie and Harriet and The Dolphin, is to ask for comparisons, indeed to cry out for them ...”

“... the words ‘bitter’ and ‘dependable’. In ‘Remembering Malibu’, a poem addressed to Brian Moore, he writes of the island monastic site of Great Skellig:                      the steps cut in the rockI never climbedbetween the graveyard and the boatslipare welted solid to my instep.Again, that ‘cutting edge’ between ...”

“... To Roald Dahl: ‘I have just finished reading Boy with immense pleasure and great horror.’ To Brian Moore: ‘I always remember our evening together at the amusing strip-tease joint which has since been closed down!’ Clearly, he enjoyed his bit of strip-tease: witness this short letter to Gloria Emerson: ‘Thank you so much for your postcard from ...”

“... where he or she is from. He discusses the work of writers from a great variety of backgrounds: Brian Moore, Mary Gordon, Thomas McGonigle and Michael Stephens. Stephens’s work, he says, is best read alongside that of the African-American Trey Ellis, the Latina Sandra Cisneros and the Scot James Kelman, rather than other Irish-Americans. Stephens’s ...”

“... sometimes with a twisted take on ageing glam rock: one of the mocked-up female faces looks like Brian Connolly, the lead singer of the Sweet. Linder initially drew or painted over found images: on a page from a Damart catalogue, for instance, she gave thermal underwear models garish lingerie and scurrilous genitalia. Guided by Ades’s book, she turned ...”

“... the publication of the later one by a lot of in-group facetiousness at the start. Although G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica still lay four years in the future, Russell had available to him the typescript of some lectures that Moore had given in London during the previous year on ‘The Elements of Ethics’. In his paper ...”

“... that the cloud that hung over public discourse for so many years got into writers’ bones, too. Brian Moore was angry at the fact that his father, who was a well read man, had been ‘brainwashed into the notion that people such as Belloc and Chesterton were the greatest English writers of their day’. When he went to Dublin after the war everyone was ...”

“... is that his irregular private life occupies a considerable fraction of this book. Professor Moore faithfully records Schrödinger’s diligent pursuit of alluring women and adolescent girls, with only a few restrained criticisms of the impropriety. Schrödinger was vain of his erotic skills and one must (putting envy aside) accept his own ...”

“... to exploit its opportunities against the carriers and liners, and at San Carlos – as General Moore admitted – there could have been a disaster had the enemy concentrated on the landing craft rather than the escorts. General Menendez also committed a cardinal error in not making an all-out effort to smash the beachhead in the first vulnerable ...”

“... And that question remains after one has read, with frequent admiration and thanks, Volume One of Brian McGuinness’s Wittgenstein: A Life. McGuinness brings more detail and documentation to his portrayal of ‘Young Ludwig (1889-1921)’ than any previous memoir or account. But those who have wanted to acquaint themselves with the story will not find much ...”

“... comes to infinity.’ A much milder version of this antagonism towards Aristotle appears in both Brian Clegg’s Brief History of Infinity and Robert and Ellen Kaplan’s The Art of the Infinite. Clegg writes that Aristotle ‘made a distinction on the matter of infinity that was to prove useful, but also was a fudge that made it possible to avoid the real ...”

“... light on architectural details or plumb the shadows of other rooms where other works lurk (a Henry Moore? another Epstein?). In a shot that is, cinematically speaking, pure Harry Potter, a statue of St George and dragon floats in mid-air without its plinth, then is gone in a twinkle of computer-generated lens flare. In fact, some of the best and strangest ...”

“... I don’t know what’ll happen as it is if I go back.’ At the end of July he wrote to Brian Friel: ‘The Appeal Board have now rejected the Faber plea to revoke the ban. So I may get sacked [from his job as a teacher]. I intend to return as if nothing had happened and I have no other plans. I am anxious to live in Dublin for some more years if I ...”