“... here, since Hunt’s daydreams became Nixon’s nightmare, and somebody, Vidal thinks, forged Arthur Bremer’s diary before the shooting of George Wallace. Vidal’s analysis of the diary is masterly, and his tone is mocking, lucid, light. There is nothing quite as good as the Hunt essay in Pink Triangle and Yellow Star either, although one or two pieces ...”

“... important ‘in a country which has no compulsory military service’ if the physique of young shop assistants is to be safeguarded. And preferably such young men and others – ‘cabmen, carters and peasants’, for example – ought to be formed, under the superintendence of the gentry, into corps of civilian ...”

“... always flourish at times of economic difficulty. During the great depression of the Thirties, young men at Oxford were reported to light their cigars with five-pound notes. During the last war, American officers in London nightclubs were also said to favour this method, and more recently, in various underdeveloped countries, we are told that the wealthy ...”

“... our revulsion, but only some do. Sartre claimed in Being and Nothingness that ‘observation’ of young children proved they were instinctively repulsed by all that is slimy. It seems more likely he was universalising his own particular phobias. As Wedlich points out, young children will quite happily eat worms; only if ...”

“... question were not Belgian but those of Cologne, rung to celebrate the German conquest of Antwerp. Arthur Ponsonby tells this story in Falsehood in Wartime, a book intended to encourage scepticism, but the reluctance to believe the worst merely because it redounded to the discredit of an enemy may have had the effect of delaying acknowledgment of what was ...”

“... Two days after the announcement of the shortlist for last year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel, Christopher Priest wrote on his blog that part of the award’s purpose is to prove to ‘the larger world’ that science fiction ‘is a progressive, modern literature, with diversity and ambition and ability, and not the pool of generic rehashing that the many outside detractors of science fiction are so quick to assume it is ...”

“... quest for a male heir through six successive brides produced only one legitimate son, and when young King Edward died in his teens, it left Edward’s half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, to succeed to the crown. Both had survived various indecisive marriage negotiations proposed by their father, and once liberated from much male interference as reigning ...”

“... Simply a statement of fact. I am in a position to know. However right Paul Rogers, Lee Chadwick, Arthur Gavshon and I may have been, the fact is that without the sustained interest of Guardian readers, and, in my case, the Labour Party up and down the country, there was no way which the professors of Belgrano Studies, as David Frost has christened us, could ...”

“... Peeping Tom (1960), Michael Powell’s brutal parable on the nature of film, a woman confronts a young cameraman, Mark, in his darkroom. Mrs Stephens, who is blind, realises there’s something disturbing about Mark, something linked to his compulsive filmmaking. ‘I’m listening to my instinct now. And it says: “All this filming isn’t ...”

“... for long, as we can’t look at the sun for long. The film was over. There was a silence. Then a young man said: ‘That was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in the movies.’ And they all said: yes. The most beautiful. The best performance. Who is she? What else did she do? This biography provides a comprehensive answer to that question. Note how ...”

“... composed four stanzas of decidedly un-Homeric verse, each revolving around her name: ‘Though young and though fair, who can hold such a cargo/Of all the good qualities going as Margot?’ George Curzon, a Soulmate nearer her own age, was moved that same year to proclaim that, however ‘wide you may wander and far go ... you never will beat’ the wit of ...”

“... grandparents vivid memories of the hardship and degradation of Tredegar between the wars, but just young enough to have benefited from the post-war Welfare State and the Sixties expansion of higher education. (A typical product of that expansion, who was able to pick up qualifications casually and without exertion while concentrating his energies on rugby and ...”

“... on ‘his’ Pacific island. Professionally bound not to intervene, he stood by and watched a young ‘witch’ starve to death for her sorcery: now his affair with the young Katy is poisoned by guilt. Their first act of love takes place on a pile of books belonging to a dead anthropologist colleague (more symbolically ...”

“... recognisably connected with the minimalist and process music of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, La Monte Young and others. In Europe, on the other hand, he was famous almost exclusively for his operas: the most recent two had been commissioned in the Netherlands and Stuttgart, and all three had been premiered in Europe. His background was largely unknown.This was ...”

“... were at least serious about literature. Too much so, one might claim. The surreal figure of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, who in the early years of the Cambridge English Faculty would greet a lecture audience composed largely of women with the word ‘Gentlemen!’, is partly excused for his belletristic waffling on the grounds that he was modestly ...”