“... his ever looking around or looking away when we were talking, except to light another of the small cheroots to which he was addicted. And the quality of his attention was remarkable: incidental details and chance remarks dropped away, and suddenly you found yourself confronting something at the centre of your life. Or rather, the chance remarks you made ...”

“... couldn’t stop. The tug rolled to port, and under the freezing Mersey. The Applegarth was small but she was solid, dense. She had her hatches open – this wasn’t open sea, after all, but the river, barely a hundred yards from a landing stage where office workers caught the ferry to Liverpool every morning – and her companionways, her cabin and ...”

“... kept, too. But we didn’t like being made to feel acquisitive, predatory, or – since we’re a small paper – rich. Nor did we relish the idea of Lonrho, whose interference had been one of the reasons some of us had left the Observer, having a stake in Newspaper Publishing. Besides, wouldn’t a merged title have been an admission that we, and not just ...”

“... wars’ against Libyan-backed rebels were waged in the desert. Four-by-fours equipped with small artillery pieces were thrown at the enemy like cuirassiers, wave after wave. At the same time, dissent was snuffed out in ‘la piscine’, the headquarters of the political police in N’Djamena where during the eight years of Habré’s reign an estimated ...”

“... digits just like other bears. The apparent ‘thumb’ is a modification and extension of a small bone in the wrist. For Stephen Gould, this is a particular and fascinating fact, but it is also an illustration of a general principle. The principle is that evolution proceeds by tinkering with what is already there, and ...”

“... sore. The skin that isn’t open is a rich vermilion. For an hour last year, Adamski carried two small metal pots in his shirt pocket. He was with a group of ‘Polish businessmen’ in Zurich. He later told police he thought the pots contained some harmlessly indivisible element – it might have been neon, he is quoted as saying in one statement. He was ...”

“... an MFA instructor proud, even as it seemed to parody MFA style: ‘I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage.’ The miscarriage is the product of a marriage that’s not built to last. This isn’t to say that Tiffany, the narrator, and Stephen, the husband, loathe each ...”

“... Frederic Harrison once climbed Mont Blanc and found Leslie Stephen on the top. Not an improbable location for the encounter of two eminent Victorians: and they might equally have met in George Eliot’s drawing-room. Whereas Stephen was much the more distinguished mountaineer, Harrison probably knew George Eliot better: he helped her work out the legal plot of Felix Holt, a service for which she may have owed him more gratitude than we need to feel ...”

“... biography with autobiography is often sidestepped by biographers less equal to their task than Stephen Gill, either by equating the ‘truth’ about a writer’s life with what that writer has specifically chosen not to reveal, or by accepting what he has revealed too literally. The first alternative is adopted by A.N. Wilson in his recent – and ...”

“... book is left to King Henry, tantrums and petty revenge to Anne Boleyn, sulks and tactlessness to Stephen Gardiner, fuming at upstart nobodies to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk. Cromwell, without title and for a long time without proper position, moved quietly ever forward. It all​ began in Putney, a few miles upriver from London, where he was born and from ...”

“... That Burundi walked out – it was the first to do so – wasn’t much of a surprise: this small East African state, which neighbours Rwanda, has been under investigation since its president, Pierre Nkurunziza, imposed a reign of terror in order to secure a third term in office, which he was constitutionally barred from seeking. The Gambia, a ...”

“... close ones, she wrote vigorous letters, and especially to Oswald Faringdon, widowed father of two small boys, far off in Egypt. ‘I wonder how you would care for life out here?’ he wrote, intending speculation but absent-mindedly posing a question instead. Elsa believed that she was being offered a new life. ‘Yes,’ she replied. And so by a quirk of ...”

“... his published poems and prose poems. Until now, his work has been available (if at all) only from small presses. He has nonetheless acquired a substantial reputation, and the publication of this collected volume shows it to be justified. Fisher occupies a curious spot in British poetry: although the dominant influences on his writing appear to be American ...”

“... business,’ said the barman. No, he hadn’t known Christopher. ‘Not that it’s as small a town as they say, but you get to know the regular faces.’ So where were the other gay bars? ‘They’re mostly around here: Basil’s, The Flying Handbag, Funny Girls ...’ I broke in on a young couple at one end of the bar and asked them if they’d ...”

“... horses), and made friends with his wife and many artists. She skied in the Swiss Alps, where her small feet seem to have been an advantage – they say women with bound feet had exceptionally strong thigh muscles.The brief periods young Eileen spent with her mother between her European trips are always warmly described in her essays. Yvonne would talk about ...”