“... and so on. Then there come in turn Look back in anger, the ‘smart playfulness’ of Nigel Dennis, later developed by Orton and Stoppard, cultural despair variously expressed – for instance, by Herbert Read and Kingsley Amis; and then to the sorts of things about which Appleyard enjoys talking, such as Brutalism and Pop Art. He does not neglect ...”

“... that perhaps no other driver ever could have done. ‘The ice-cool bit,’ the British driver Martin Brundle said of him earlier this year, ‘is part of his make-up. He’s totally single-minded, selfish even. That partly explains his success. But emotionally he can be caught out.’ Perhaps that’s what happened at Imola. At any time, his loss would ...”

“... Since Success, Martin Amis has been involved in a spectacular case of alleged plagiarism. As the apparently aggrieved author, Amis showed himself notably unresentful and unlitigious. Indeed, he took the offence as an occasion to ruminate good-naturedly on the oddities of literary ‘borrowing’. It’s relevant to bring this up since Other People depends very largely on a trick which is usually thought to be someone else’s trademark ...”

“... it closer to home at least once. On 1 August 1939 Kathleen and her friend Julia Vickers met Frank Martin, who took them driving around Charleston, West Virginia in his grey Packard convertible. At Valley Bell Dairy he bought them cheese, and at Dan’s Beer Parlor he got them pints. Kathleen said they ought to rent a room somewhere; it would cost $4.50. ...”

“... Cup winning striker Jürgen Klinsmann, by Spurs. The following year Arsenal bought Holland’s Dennis Bergkamp, and Middlesbrough, of all places, recruited a Brazilian international, Juninho. The new era was hailed as a rousing revival after the horrors of the 1980s; there was little talk, at first, of football having sold its soul. Ticket prices were not ...”

“... a Pistols camp follower, later to become a bass-player in his own right, puts it: You know that Dennis Potter play where the grown-ups are playing kids, Blue Remembered Hills? It was like that. When you put emotional cripples together, you get something very powerful. It can be good or bad, and it can be directed either way. It had to burn out, it was the ...”

“... developed psoriasis (and doesn’t omit a mention of the disease’s literary credentials through Dennis Potter), her mother had died, and she had found a new love, soon to become a new husband. The Attallah house in the Dordogne was designated the place to write fiction. The novel was to be very beautiful, she was instructed, and romantic: ‘It has to be a ...”

“... of me willing them on. But by the end I felt relief. ‘There goes the feelgood factor,’ said Dennis Howell. I then felt a total heel when I called home and the boys were crying their eyes out. JM looked a bit ashen. Just as we had been worrying, however irrationally, about the political benefits to him of England winning, so a part of him must have been ...”

“... signals are not good.’ Television was a more forgiving environment when Panorama started. Dennis Bardens, the programme’s creator, was a Fleet Street feature writer turned freelance radio producer, who in the early 1950s was overseeing a weekly factual series for the BBC Light Programme. It occurred to him to try to transfer the populist documentary ...”

“... teenage darts prodigy, who stepped onto the world stage this winter as if from the pages of a Martin Amis novel, O’Sullivan’s prodigious talent made him a fan favourite as soon as he turned professional. His personality – anguished, combative, romantic – has only sustained his fame since. His fickleness, too, is legendary. During the 2010 World ...”

“... the Royal Command Performance of the film: ‘Tony saw Love Story in New York. Hated it.’ When Dennis Main Wilson says, ‘Ma’am, I have the honour to produce a little show called Till Death Us Do Part,’ she cuts down his faux modesty with: ‘Isn’t that that frightfully dreary thing in the East End?’ At the end of Carousel at the National ...”

“... by boys with what I still think of as normal classic names: Simon, Mark, Peter, Andrew, Paul, Martin, Michael, Stephen, Richard, Robert, David. Girls’ names remained more modish: some Sarahs, Anns and Elizabeths and even some residual Marys, but also plenty of Janets, Jackies, Lisas and Debbies, who soared and plummeted through the bestseller lists in ...”

“... faced by a posse of minor Gladstones – Paddy Ashdown leading the LibDem charge, for instance, or Martin Bell of the BBC – whining about the agony of the Balkans. Hurd and Rifkind, and minor figures such as Douglas Hogg, all fancied themselves as men of steel, cool under fire, especially if it happened to be raining down on Sarajevo. They had their own ...”

“... nothing can be a real cool hand.’ He earns the respect of his fellow inmates (including a young Dennis Hopper and Harry Dean Stanton) in a boxing match against another prisoner, Dragline (George Kennedy), through his dogged willingness to offer up his body as a punchbag. It’s one of Newman’s best performances and was forced out of him by Rosenberg, who ...”

“... argued that what they called ‘vexatious’ prosecutions were cruel and unfair. The case of Dennis Hutchings, a former member of the Life Guards who died aged eighty during his trial for murder, became a particular rallying point. In 1974, Hutchings shot and killed John Pat Cunningham, a 27-year-old man with severe learning difficulties, as he ran away ...”