“... become popular in Britain in a cheap edition published in 1887 by one of his socialist admirers, Ernest Rhys. ‘The priest departs, the divine Literatus comes.’ Whitman’s conception of the role of the poet in relation to 19th-century American culture contrasts vividly with the indifference with which his own productions were received, even those most ...”

“... force to deliver the bomb. Dalton and Cripps attempted a rearguard action against it in 1946, but Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, would have none of it. Smarting from the way he’d just been talked down to in Washington, Bevin insisted that being taken seriously by the US now depended on having the bomb: ‘We’ve got to have this thing over ...”

“... meeting, known as ‘speaker’ and ‘participation’. In one you must listen, in the other you may talk. The form of discourse in participation groups is distinctive. Dialogue (in AA-speak, ‘cross-talk’) is proscribed. You don’t address your fellow alcoholics, you ‘share’. It looks to the outsider like a seminar discussion but isn’t; it’s a ...”

“... and the Oulipo’, Mathews gives an account of a befuddled ethnolinguist called Ernest Botherby who, encountering two undiscovered New Guinean tribes, tried to explain to one the existence of the other. He was hindered by the fact that the language of each tribe contained only three words, which could be used to express only a single ...”

“... or a crippled Jake Barnes, or a hollowed-out Frederic Henry, but an overbearing know-it-all named Ernest Hemingway’. Max Eastman said Hemingway had false hair on his chest. Gertrude Stein, in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, called his courage into question. Of course, there was a lot to debunk – and much, much more would come in the shape of ...”

“... by debate. Each man chose a team, with an eye on victory. Schapiro’s team, which consisted of Ernest Nagel, the philosopher of science at Columbia, and A.J. Ayer, represented positivism de pur sang. In addition to these painstaking analyses, the essay contains the suggestion that the most fruitful way of looking at any theory of unity is to regard it, not ...”

“... the map of concentric urban zones drawn in the Twenties by the Chicago School sociologist, Ernest W. Burgess, and a future Los Angeles segregated along the stratifying dimensions of land value, class, race and fear. A ‘Core City’ homeless containment zone sits at the centre of an inner city surrounded by a circle of decaying blue-collar ...”

“... mostly long gone and others not notable for their movie credits – Karl Lagerfeld, Walker Evans, Ernest Shackleton and Lego. In Thomson’s view film ought to be enough to detain a film-loving writer, but it isn’t. Perhaps Lane is merely keeping his options open and, who knows, doesn’t want to be a writer exclusively on film. The diversity is ...”

“... a financial issue in Design for Living (1932), and a parent-figure in Gilda’s outsider husband Ernest, but essentially the contest is between a ménage and its trois. In the later comedies the hero juggles the delights of sex as against solitude: in Present Laughter (1934) he prefers his women absent, and in Blithe Spirit (1941) wishes they were ...”

“... his works seriously could ever really believe in: the ordinary, undamaged specimen. According to Ernest Jones, ‘her personality was fully developed and well integrated: it would well deserve the psychoanalysts’ highest compliment of being “normal”.’ No problem for Martha coming to terms with her missing penis at the right stage of her ...”

“... family from which Scott had been her escape. Zelda lived to please, but nobody much liked her. Ernest Hemingway, who detested women writers, saw her as an insane harpy who destroyed Scott’s work. Though Cline insists, often on flimsy evidence, that Zelda was an authentic artist, she is fair-minded enough to surround her with women who really did make ...”

“... to the search for spiritual truth, this religious background deserves more attention. Pound may have turned against Christianity, but for much of his life he was looking for – and even sought to be – a saviour. Moody learned to write biography as he went along. His third volume is better presented than its predecessors, which have too many ...”

“... in point of his electoral programme hardly less so. (Still, at the 1945 Labour Party Conference, Ernest Bevin came raging up to those, including Ian Mikardo and oddly enough James Callaghan, who had called for public ownership to be in the Manifesto and yelled: ‘Congratulations! You have just lost us the election.’) Harold Wilson actually beat the Tories ...”

“... of this book so that you could not read it. But now you can. Or at the very least, now you may. I telephoned the publicity department of HarperCollins to inquire who had tried, and how, to ‘stop the publication’ of Newt’s fruits. There was vagueness. I was referred downwards and sideways and eventually into the post-voicemail void. Now, there was ...”

“... reward. That is, MacArthur stakes a wager on potential: it is not what you have done, but what you may do, which is judged, or prejudged. ‘The kid will go far,’ is the message they send. Such prophecy is notoriously inaccurate. The MacArthur operation has not been going long enough for one to see how many out-and-out winners they have in fact chosen ...”