“... Honan’s sounds at times like a Victorian carol: ‘In early life he must have been the focus of Mary’s very urgently watchful, intense love.’) If Shakespeare’s birthday belongs to a priesthood it isn’t Holy Trinity’s but the threefold local clerisy made up of the Shakespeare Institute, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Shakespeare Birthplace ...”

“... is clear from his attitude to the movement’s two women painters, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Malely, he describes the first as Manet’s pupil and the second as Degas’s – true in neither case. Morisot was one of the founder Impressionists of 1874 and Huysmans barely has an unpatronising word to say about her. The ...”

“... cult’s worth of junk food (it’s a ten-hour drive); the Goncourt brothers. I was hoping that Edmond and Jules would help me get somewhere with the Pompadour and all those ghastly Bouchers.I also threw in an unopened copy of Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, picked up on a whim a few evenings earlier at the Stanford Shopping Center. (I once spotted ...”