“... of rice has been stolen and the possible culprits are made to stand in a line. ‘We shall see who took the rice.’ There is a silence and then the Mullah speaks and points to the villain. ‘It was you.’ But Master, how did you know? Only you touched your beard for fear that some rice might have stuck to it. Not a really convincing story. All the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... at least equally absorbing in Florence. ‘One of them, called Adriana, was so witty she literally took away your breath: you were scared to respire in case you missed a wisecrack.’ This sentence, in describing a temporary apnoea, validates the adverb ‘literally’, without actually specifying the wit that caused the fit. Still, here was a kindred spirit ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... from the rest of the world. This can go too far. Some of her narration has a stunned, Janet-and-John quality. But the restaurant served only beer and wine, so they left. Carol did not stop anywhere for her drink as they drove back towards New York. Carol asked her if she wanted to go home or come out to Carol’s house for a while, and Therese said to ...”

“... business of rewriting for the actors takes up a lot of time in America. I am still surprised that John Malkovich agreed to play Valmont without having it written in his contract that he didn’t have to die. It would have left him available for Dangerous Liaisons II. Diana Ross, on her way to Paris to make a ‘highly personal’ (auteuriste?) film about ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... settled for a while in Portugal and eventually retired to Italy, where Maestro Sabatini took pupils, among them the Irish tenor and future Papal Count John McCormack. Rafael spent much of his boyhood with his maternal grandparents in Liverpool and always regarded England as his home. At 17 he started work as a ...”

“... own. Under this heady new influence Jack wrote the story that won him his first publication (in John O’ London’s Weekly) and first fee (six guineas). His first novel to be accepted was also a Saroyanesque essay, Green to Pagan Street, though The Trouble with Harry was published first. By about 1950 he was doing well enough to set up as a full-time ...”

“... political movement. In April 1937 an international commission, headed by the philosopher John Dewey, assembled in Mexico to enquire into the Stalinist charges of conspiracy against Trotsky, and pronounced a verdict totally exonerating him. This was no doubt useful in influencing world opinion in Trotsky’s favour; but a 1938 manifesto signed by ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... as hiccoughs, which would disappear of their own accord when growth resumed. Even those who took a longer view had grounds for hope. Industrial society was clearly more difficult to govern than it had been twenty years before, but – in Britain as elsewhere – it looked as though the difficulties were being tackled. We had joined the EEC under Heath ...”

“... of the property speculator, and slowly the local political establishment – ruled in Southwark by John O’Grady and his hand-picked ‘mafia’ of loyal Bermondsey councillors – began to listen to the siren songs of the speculators whose seductive promises of high rate income, ‘planning gain’, and glamorous architectural gigantisme, led them inexorably ...”

“... 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 ...”