“... proof readers to leave the following intact? Dinner last night with Malcolm and Kitty. We took with us our enterprising and appealing grandson Benjie Fraser, aged 22, and his enchanting girlfriend, still at St Paul’s. She is the daughter of Caroline (née Blackwood) by her second husband, a Polish musician. Caroline was married earlier to Lucian ...”

“... symbolically, as when the boar-killing on his birthday is read off as ‘the far come close took by the littl come big.’ And like Lisa in The White Hotel, Riddley pursues an obscure ideal of oneness, which he thinks of as ‘that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome’, though his problem is that ‘you try to take holt of the 1 ness and it ...”

“... homosexual proclivities and on his retirement wrote an ode to the penis’, or that Edith Sitwell took to her bed for six weeks after Noel Coward put her in a play as Hernia Whittlebot, or that Ibsen three times over a period of twenty years based characters on a ‘fellow poet, novelist and dramatist whose easy self-confidence’ contrasted with his own ...”

“... employed throughout the text: the use of portmanteau neologisms in the tradition that James Joyce took over from Humpty Dumpty. The effectiveness of the device is more limited than is often allowed: it’s an easy trick to learn, and while the odd hit in this mode attracts praise, who keeps a tally of the numerous misses? But what would seem certain is that ...”

“... Herbert Windt, the composer – was able to synchronise the music correctly ... So I myself took over the task of conducting the 80-man orchestra.’ Kleine Mich with oak leaves, swords and diamonds! She goes on to make the 1936 Olympics film, still reckoned to be the supreme cinematic expression of the athletic ideal. She is decked with honours from ...”

“... and funny with it. The book is candid about this trait and bristles with the opportunities Hammond took to turn an argument into a bitter row. One savage phrase he thought up in his hotel bedroom; on another occasion he records his pleasure at opponents having to apologise to him in front of Lord Denning, about which awful old gentleman he has a blind ...”

“... In​ U&I (1991), his book about John Updike, Nicholson Baker imagines explaining the appeal of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library to his literary hero. ‘You know, once you get used to the initially kind of disgusting level of homosexual sex, which quickly becomes really interesting as a kind of ethnography, you realise that this is really one of the best first novels to come along in years and years!’ But Updike couldn’t get used to the sex ...”

“... of Amaral’s colourised photographs, this time of Lewis Powell, one of the men who conspired with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Lincoln, and who on the same night made a savage attempt on the life of his secretary of state, William H. Seward. The shoppers were asked when they thought it had been taken. Powell is leaning against the pocked metal of his cell ...”

“... is a civic obligation. Early one morning, I watched for an hour as people on their way to work took chances. Large numbers don’t use the crossing at all, a few climbing over the metal barriers to cross the road nearer the corner, forgoing the lights altogether. We might forget that living in a big city means submitting to a lot of rules about how to live ...”

“... order of service is a scream,’ I said. ‘A reading from The West Highland Railway by John Thomas?’ ‘Well, there you are.’ ‘Also a reading from The Liverpool Repertory Theatre, 1911-34. Followed by a bit of Macaulay’s “The Passing of the Second Reading of the Reform Bill”, read by Lord Mayhew. Address by Alasdair Milne, Director ...”

“... 1832, the antiquary Alexandre Du Sommerard moved in with his own collection of medieval art and took a couple of rooms, including the chapel. He opened his collection to the public and Cluny entered its chrysalis phase as a museum in waiting. Some of Du Sommerard’s objects are still in the collection, many more have been added and subtracted. In this ...”

“... the driver, enjoyed a clear view of the road ahead. Is it really a testament to ingenuity that it took so long to notice the seemingly obvious fact that legs are more powerful than arms when performing a rotational movement? Even after the invention of the pedal-driven two-wheeler in the mid-1860s, and the discovery that it was better not to pedal and steer ...”

“... Continental Drift, Bob Dubois dies of stab wounds on a Miami side street. That novel won the 1985 John Dos Passos Prize and was nominated for the Pulitzer. The road not taken isn’t pretty, but there’s a lot of mileage in it. ‘This is not Bambi territory,’ a lawyer says in The Sweet Hereafter, the story of a small town convulsed when a school bus ...”

“... myself understood, the more it becomes obvious that he will never escape condemnation, the thing John Major called for more of in his statement at the time of the trial. I have dreams about the boys, and sometimes dream I am the person in the CCTV footage who walks past them with a shopping bag at the exact moment they abducted James. I can see the ...”

“... him. The nicest monk, Brother Luke, turned out to be grooming him, and later kidnapped him and took him on a tour of West Texas, pimping him out and using him as a personal consort. When Jude develops a habit of throwing himself against walls, Brother Luke gives him a razor and teaches him to cut himself as an outlet for his rage. One night police break ...”