“... pope is, are you false? Do you ever feel yourself to be false? Does your name ever feel untrue, Francis? As you became larger and larger, did you feel yourself becoming smaller and smaller? Are the words ever strange in your mouth? Do you ever shake in this place? Can a blessing fly through you to someone else’s belly? Who gets to be different, who gets ...”

“... whole lifetimes comprised of such moments.Towards the end, when Lincoln emerges from church, Mrs Francis Hodge tells what she sees: ‘Near the front gate stood Mr Havens, square in that white man’s path, as I had been, but doing, then, something I had not the nerve (nor desire) to do.’ This line feels alive, with nerve, with desire. It just seems, when ...”

“... it – with every inch of my body? Ivano and Valentino, staying together at San Francisco’s St Francis Hotel while filming Moran of the Lady Letty, enjoyed a brisk and bacchic itinerary: After shooting outdoors from seven in the morning until seven at night, they’d bathe, put on bathrobes, and order dinner in. Then they’d sleep a few hours, setting ...”

“... of Dale’s hundred best tunes) deserve a place in the record, it is not obvious why such names as Francis Coventry, Thomas Holcroft or Robert Paltock should be left out. (Not to mention James Boswell, author of Dorando.) The omission of John Cleland may be deliberate and provocative – it provokes me to cheerful assent – but Spender’s researches have ...”

“... and Mapplethorpe into virtual saints, with all the stink and bedlam of their wild ride erased. Francis Bacon minus the screams, Genet without the cocks, Bataille sans the mad laughter. The pair of Mapplethorpe’s slippers that Smith has shown under glass in recent years (part of shrine-like exhibitions comprised of favourite and significant objets), look ...”

“... I asked for her when I thought she might be free. In the meantime, my left arm felt like a Francis Bacon painting. The CT scanners must have thought I was someone who liked making a racket. When they stuck the needle into me, I started to yelp. I yelped my way through the little tunnel as my insides were scanned. I yelped as the scan returned me to ...”

“... the gallery owner Betty Parsons – even the kooky, spooky, more-than-a-little-ropey Patricia Highsmith, a gothic late-life pal, intriguingly, of Murphy’s. It’s true that the polyamorous de Acosta accounted for many, if not most, of the downright sexual conquests here. To read about her star-studded sex life is to be reminded of those ...”

“... fizzy drinks maker PepsiCo; for 18 days a year advising Cinven, which owns 37 private hospitals, Patricia Hewitt, one of Milburn’s successors as health secretary, was paid £60,000. The revolving door has become a blur. Simon Stevens, Blair’s special adviser on health, is now an executive vice president at UnitedHealth, one of America’s largest private ...”