“... to journalism), and Olive is a famous children’s writer. Lucky Wellwood children, Tom, Dorothy, Phyllis and Hedda, are making paper lanterns. Philip reflects that, in his former life, he had to beg for scraps of paper to draw on; but these generous people throw away paper with unconcern. Byatt comments: ‘He looked up and had the disconcerting sense that ...”

“... in the changing world of post-war London: The Carlos restaurant was charming. It was panelled in rose mahogany, and had a high, pleasantly moulded ceiling. The tables were far apart, and there were shaded lamps on those near the walls. There were flowers on our table, three chrysanthemums, with curled pink and bronze petals, in a little silver-plated ...”

“... Not in early adulthood, and apparently many never come around to that realisation. Dr Phyllis Greenacre, New York City psychoanalyst, teacher and tutor, in her studies of Swift, Carroll and Thomas Mann, became aware of the tendency of many creative people to feel bewildered in possessing mental gifts beyond those of others. She believes that many ...”

“... Fifth String Quartet, Byzantium – a setting of W.B. Yeats for soprano and orchestra – and The Rose Lake (a fifth symphony for orchestra in all but name) flew off the page with improvisational abandon.Oliver Soden​ was born in 1990, and his Life of Tippett is refreshingly free of old prejudices and stale arguments. (The previous standard text, Ian ...”

“... aged 15, became Henry on the family’s arrival in New York – never forgot the lesson. Kissinger rose by his own efforts, working in a shaving brush factory during the day, studying accountancy by night at the City College of New York. The army was the making of him: recruited to military intelligence, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was the chief ...”

“... to record an experience truthfully’); and so in fact did her friends: ‘She sits talking, as Phyllis said, in a social way, to such a point that you can’t believe the things she says are real. But they are real.’ And they were. At the apparently fashionable ‘boasting’ parties White went to, she had no trouble producing the true and absolutely ...”

“... moment everything is in proportion; the next, sights brighten, outlines sharpen, the scent of a rose becomes monstrous. Frederica, who by the time of Babel Tower has fled the shock of Stephanie’s death into an isolating and brutal marriage with Nigel, eventually breaks free and makes a new life for herself in London. She reads manuscripts and appears on ...”

“... blow-dried ladies come and go in their festive plumage, their glasses empty and their talons red. Phyllis Schlafly, 80, Republican matriarch, doyenne of the Christian right, has been hating feminists and opposing gay rights since the Goldwater campaign, in praise of which she wrote a little book. The woman whom Betty Friedan once told she would like to see ...”

“... of a century, were all absent. In the end, the Lacanian journey was a family affair. When Lacan rose to pre-eminence in the Sixties, French intellectual life was divided into politicised factions, mobilised by true believers. And his work became itself a system that competed on these ideological grounds. ‘Lacanianism served as an ideological alternative ...”