“... patrician composure suggestive of Burt Lancaster playing Lampedusa’s Leopard. Neither Vidal nor Howard Auster, his long-standing companion, swam in the pool, which was even more impressively blue than the sea at the foot of the cliff. Sunshine, cypresses, cicadas, scented air, the physical drama: all the sense-heightening Mediterranean stuff. Kurt ...”

“... at female figures of the past. King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant (2007) was about Henrietta Howard, long-service mistress of George II, while Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen (2010) dealt with Elizabeth’s mother, sister and female competitors. Her co-authored history of royal weddings, The Ring and the Crown, came out somewhat ...”

“... a world as distant as possible from the one in which she was raised. Arbus’s brother, the poet Howard Nemerov, wrote that her ‘pictures are spectacular, shocking, dramatic and concentrate on subjects perverse and queer (freaks, professional transvestites, strong men, tattooed men, the children of the very rich)’. He and Diane were the children of ...”

“... far too damaging to be employed only two years before an election, and by a clever coup Michael Howard was installed without opposition. Not surprisingly, he proved infinitely better than his two predecessors, but he did not have enough time, and never looked anything like a winner. As a result of Tory inadequacy, Labour won easily in 2005 and although the ...”

“... grass is a stone slab, bearing the names and dates of birth of Vidal and his lifelong companion Howard Austen. The hyphens that come after the years (1925 and 1928 respectively) lie like little marble asps, waiting to keep their dates. Who knows what decided the cemetery authorities to advertise their prospective clients in this way? Elsewhere among the ...”

“... began in 1903 after a competition to design a town that demonstrated the ideas of Ebenezer Howard. Howard’s book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform was loosely based on the work of Henry George and, following George’s philosophy, the growing development value of Letchworth was returned directly to its ...”

“... soap: Allan Stewart, wielder of the pick-axe; Michael Mates, sender of the famous watch; Norman Lamont, evictor (with some help from the tax-payer) of the tenant with too colourful a professional life; Patrick Nicholls, suspected drunk driver; Nicholas Ridley, too loquacious an advocate of anti-German feeling; and Mrs Edwina Currie (‘most of the ...”

“... G.E. Street, a designer of great fluency who in the words of Webb’s successor in the post, Norman Shaw, never let his pupils design so much as a keyhole. That was a principle which Webb came also to adopt. On graduating from Oxford, Morris briefly fancied becoming an architect and put himself under Street, who handed him on to Webb. Something of the ...”

“... dollar bills into a shredder in order to disguise their provenance in the empire of – Howard Hughes? Marilyn Monroe fucked both Kennedy brothers before taking her own life, if she did indeed take it. Frank Sinatra raised money for the Reagans and acted as at least a confidante to the First Lady. ...”

“... published without an index, From the House of War, a book to be classed perhaps with William Howard Russell’s My Diary North and South on the opening phases of the American Civil War, is not at all carelessly written, nor is its quality impaired by periodic observations that remind one that the author is a television man. Indeed, that seems especially ...”

“... he gave her in the 1990s.) His agent, Bonnie Nadell, became a close friend, and his editors Gerry Howard and Michael Pietsch were angelically supportive. Howard tried to persuade Wallace to give Broom ‘a brilliantly theatrical close’; instead it ends mid-sentence, with the sad sack Rick Vigorous trying to seduce the ...”

“... Clausewitz are not taken from what is now the standard English translation of On War, by Michael Howard and Peter Paret. I suspect that they have been translated from the French, but would hope that my fears are unfounded. In any case, the translation of the text is turgid, and full of mistakes. Where Aron comments on the view that Clausewitz, towards the ...”

“... from great movies: the likes of Richard Blaine and Ilsa Lund, George Bailey, Travis Bickle and Norman Bates, who turn out, in the interstices of the entries, to have entangled lives and a dark plot all of their own. If only Howard Hawks wasn’t dead and had made a movie of Suspects we could all die happy and go to ...”

“... said he hated New York for the greed and envy at Elaine’s, but he talked about Truman Capote and Norman Mailer as he did ten years ago – as rivals and enemies, coming back to them obsessively. Worst of all the New York crowd was Alfred Kazin – ‘Saul Bellow called him the conductor on the gravy train. Wherever they were passing out ...”

“... Parliament was the one that would soon become conventional for his generation: special adviser (to Norman Lamont when he was chancellor), then a bit of media work (for Carlton Television), all eased by the lubricant of personal connections. May took the old-fashioned route. She fought two losing campaigns in safe Labour seats before finally securing the ...”