“... were to be grim and many. Now, in our happily inglorious days, we have them again, in Landeg White’s new English version of Os Lusíadas. This is admirably done, being neither rumbustious nor boastful but shrewdly suited to the spirit of a modern readership. Above all, perhaps, it comes most appropriately for the winding up of Portugal’s empire, five ...”

“... completely professional during the past three decades, tennis deserves a place of honour in what Christopher Lasch called the culture of narcissism. A sport of skilful, well-mannered ladies and gentlemen has metamorphosed into a brutal confrontation between unpleasant, physically overdeveloped and remorselessly single-minded hitters, which is controlled by ...”

“... of the likes of Pat Buchanan notwithstanding – close to the political culture of its white, Puritan and overwhelmingly English origins. The Spanish settlements were never colonies, or, as the English called them, ‘plantations’ (before the attempted reforms of the late 18th century), but dependent kingdoms, or reinos de Indias, governed by a ...”

“... The Thief’s Journal, Lolita, various unreadable works by Henry Miller, pornographic novels by Christopher Logue and Alexander Trocchi, a para-Beat from Glasgow, and Trocchi’s ghosted volume of the Frank Harris memoirs (Trocchi was Olympia’s ‘top all-out literary stallion’, according to Girodias). Olympia went on to publish two more works by ...”

“... of him in a sketchbook. On another occasion, in March 1970, a few of us, including his friend Christopher Isherwood, went to his rooms. I remember the affectionate banter between Forster and Isherwood, and their contrasting hairstyles – Forster’s a rather unruly, fine white mop, Isherwood’s a razor-sharp crew ...”

“... story. I would have liked an authoritative judgment on the fate of the Monte Bello black and white fairy wren. Also more on the role of the Australians, not least because Anglo-Australian relations are now in such dire repair. In a good discussion of why Britain decided against having the US test the device in Nevada, Cathcart misses the key point made ...”

“... seven Main Events, a kind of DIY ordeal, under the quasi-pastoral supervision of Joe (named Joseph Christopher, with heavy symbolism), a burnt-out novelist who is trenchantly characterised – the aureole of prematurely white hair, the professional smiles, the psychotherapist’s way of knowing everything about you and ...”

“... over and Peter was pronounced living for a day or two more. We, Doris’s staples, Roger, Chloe, Christopher and I, took it in turns to wait outside the ICU, to be called, although we all said we were doing it for Doris not Peter, who had failed to draw any warmth from us. What was his quality of life? The big question from the doctor who made the big ...”

“... report concerning chemical weapons was severely curtailed on the orders of Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff. ‘Something was in there that triggered a shit fit by McDonough,’ the former Defense Department official said. ‘One day it was a huge deal, and then, after the March and April sarin attacks’ – he snapped his fingers ...”

“... other contributions to the Oxford History. The chapter on Southern Africa in the 19th century by Christopher Saunders and Iain Smith benignly suggests that ‘British troops repeatedly intervened to play a crucial role in supporting settlers who were unable on their own to displace African farmers.’ No attempt is made to describe what ‘intervention’ or ...”

“... greatest experience of political disadvantage and unrest. Black poets here are less reluctant than white to give vent to their frustrations – they don’t recognise didacticism as a ‘problem’. Nor does Tom Paulin, who as a critic is much concerned with British and Irish politics, and as a poet mixes references to B-Specials with words like glooby and ...”

“... Osbert Lancaster, Robert Byron, Anthony Powell, Peter Quennell, Tom Driberg, Harold Acton, Christopher Sykes, Randolph Churchill, W.H. Auden, and lots of others, including Gaitskell once more (‘Hugh, may I stroke your bottom?’ ‘Oh, I suppose so, if you must’). With Auden he went to bed; also, according to Hillier (citing Peter Quennell), he ...”

“... bedrooms, or in desert cities such as Sana’a, with its towers of baked mud decorated with white scrolls and borders like piped icing. But on the whole, the freedoms of the flesh Pasolini dreams up take place in the open air, free of clothes or inhibitions – free of stone. It’s significant that Pasolini turned to the Orient to conjure his rather ...”

“... inspired simpleton, a great big silly goose’. He makes a memorable entrance as Stephen Savage in Christopher Isherwood’s thinly fictionalised novel Lions and Shadows (1938): ‘He burst in upon us, blushing, sniggering loudly, contriving to trip over the edge of the carpet – an immensely tall, shambling boy of 19, with a great scarlet poppy-face, wild ...”

“... Portuguese without shame, a grilling sea-wall, its pavement burst up by the waves, houses built on white piles, with chickens ducks cookery and washing sharing the basement, a desolate and grilling public garden, and the sea full of floating brown pennies of oil. This short passage shows a spontaneous poetic flair rarely equalled in Forster’s fiction, or ...”