“... the act of composition: brow furrowed, pencil poised, the poet sports a rust-red silk scarf over a black shirt and wears a large ring mounted with a chunky ruby. The painting is clumsy but it does express how seriously Hill takes himself and the stupefied awe his critics feel for him. One of Hill’s most notable champions is ...”

“... standards, the town of Sukhumi was a place of real pleasure: arranged about a crescent bay of the Black Sea, the climate warm even in October, with seaside hotels and restaurants. Those who knew the customs of the place, and had the money or clout to exploit them, could have a grand time here in the Georgian manner, drinking and feasting. A senior Georgian ...”

“... unruly age. But he prefers even more the sacrificial transgressions of forbidden love. He sees in Christopher Caudwell’s conversion to Communism a ‘loving surrender to necessity’ that could only have occurred through a ‘psychic revolution in the lover’. Caudwell’s commitment to the proletariat was complete. The politics of less committed writers ...”

“... god lives, Gather on willow-ground The blood that was shed, moon-coolness; All roads flow into black decay. Under the golden boughs of the night and stars Sister’s shadow sways through the silent grove, To greet the spirits of the heroes, the bleeding heads; And softly the dark pipes of autumn sound in the reeds. O prouder sorrow! You brazen altars, The ...”

“... problem is ‘a blockage’, ‘encumbrances’ in his bowel. ‘Morbid matter … Bad stuff … black bile: mela chole,’ the doctor says. ‘Your illness is not a thing; it is a process. A rhythm. Toxins are secreted around body, organs become accustomed and, perverted by custom, addicted.’ The deep link between spiritual state and bowel habit was well ...”

“... did clothing develop both to mark the separation of sex roles and to take female labour. The black cloth suit of the businessman was as ready to show a grease spot as the lightweight muslin of his wife: both garments appear simple and plain but call for a great deal of upkeep. It became accepted that though women were not physically suited to the rigours ...”

“... the only World War Two summit at which China was represented. Sitting at the conference table in a black satin dress with a chrysanthemum pattern and split skirt, black tulle bows in her hair and shoes decorated with big brass nails, she made a considerable impact. Nobody knew quite what her role was, but she made the most ...”

“... animation. But Olamina dies before the starships actually take off. The first is called the Christopher Columbus, in spite of her objections. ‘This ship is not about a shortcut to riches and empire. It’s not about snatching up slaves and gold and presenting them to some European monarch. But one can’t win every battle. One must know which battles ...”

“... full of cinéaste aperçus, literary pastiches, prancing fashion flashes – ‘I now carry a black silk umbrella with a red silk ribbon wound spirally round it’ – and livid accounts of his sexual conquests. Tynan’s adult writing on sex was almost always gruesome – lecherous twee interspersed with purple pretension. The schoolboy ...”

“... draws in her claim that the description of the wider world which inspired Henry the Navigator and Christopher Columbus was in fact concocted by a canny opportunist who never left Europe. After rummaging through a library basement for one of the volumes necessary to evaluate her arguments, and battling my way through just one of the notes on Marco Polo by the ...”

“... it in 1937 as The Unique City. More recently, both David Piper in his Companion Guide (1964) and Christopher Hibbert in Biography of a City (1969) have written with elegance and comprehension, the first closer to the form of the traditional guidebook, the second to the style of the popular historian. Yet there is still no satisfactory fusion of guide and ...”

“... gulf and the sky was lit by sudden wide sheets of lightning which threw up in stark relief angry black fists and knuckles of stormcloud, and bright jagged flashes which hissed into the sea. The trees across the river flapped about in the rising wind, their broad leaves languidly enfolding one another, and then the blessed rain came. When the narrator ...”

“... to watch a baseball game. A police car comes smoothly along the path keeping parallel with a young black guy who is walking over the grass. The police keep calling to him from the car but he ignores them and eventually stops right in the middle of the baseball game. A policeman gets out and begins questioning him, but warily and from a distance. The baseball ...”

“... for clichés in this flourish of literary criticism from Dream of Fair to Middling Women: ‘Black diamond of pessimism.’ Belacqua thought that was a nice example, in the domain of words, of the little sparkle hid in ashes, the precious margaret and hid from many, and the thing that the conversationalist, with his contempt of the tag and ...”

“... a visit arranged by the Great Britain-USSR Society. My colleagues were the novelists Paul Bailey, Christopher Hope and Timothy Mo (who also writes for Boxing News), the poet Craig Raine (who doesn’t) and the playwright Sue Townsend of Adrian Mole fame. I had many misgivings about the trip, particularly in regard to creature comforts. I wondered, for ...”