“... about him. One could be expelled from this club. The early death of Calder coincided almost to the day with that of Walker, Perkin as he was called – Wilson’s friend from Westminster days. Drabble seems to know all about him; her portrait convinced and surprised me. Here, it emerges, was a man given, like Wilson, to nightmares, to bouts of uncontrolled ...”

“... Among the testimony of others (former nuns, social workers), we are given an account by Robin Fox, editor of the Lancet, written after a visit to Mother Teresa’s ‘operation’ in Calcutta. Dr Fox, although favourably disposed towards Mother Teresa’s work, found that medical facilities for the ill and the dying were not only woefully ...”

“... but despite having a covetable job as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, Robin Collingwood disliked college life and despised academic forms of thought and writing, especially in philosophy. If the responsibilities attached to his job were performed expeditiously, it was only because he refused to give them a moment’s more attention ...”

“... to name, with an influence extending far beyond the telephone kiosk. For some critics (such as Robin Middleton, in John Soane, Architect) Soane’s wholly unclassical handling of space makes his work the ultimate origin of architectural Modernism; others, stressing his playful pastiche of classical Order, see him instead as the fountainhead of ...”

“... now have been a baronet and the owner of the large Tichborne estate in Hampshire. And on Christmas Day 1866 he arrived in London to claim his inheritance. It is hard to think of any respect in which the Claimant resembled Roger. He was already 13 and a half stone, in contrast to the wraithlike Roger, and was to reach massive proportions, 28 stone 4 lbs, by ...”

“... fell on the mat in the morning,’ he later said. ‘It was always a depressing start to the day.’ He wrote his fourth over the course of a year, titled it ‘Strangers from Within’, and sent it to Jonathan Cape, the publisher that had seemed most sympathetic to his earlier efforts, on 1 January 1953. A few weeks later, he heard the familiar thud as ...”

“... wretch wilt thou let thy soule be tyde To Mens lawes, by which she shall not be tryed At the last day? Oh will it then serve thee To say a Philipp, or a Gregorie, A Harry, or a Martin tought me this? Is not this excuse for meere contrarys Equally stronge? cannot both sides say so? That thou mayst rightly obay power, her bounds know: Those past, her ...”

“... Drummond Street is earmarked to be the entrance for lorries into the site, hundreds of them every day, backing up along the narrow street, making things impossible for Diwana and the half-dozen or so other restaurants. The Euston Arch in 1955 In the mid-19th century, the construction in quick succession of Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras resulted ...”

“... international capital requirements. At a private dinner in London in September 1986 with Robin Leigh-Pemberton, governor of the Bank of England, and three of his officials, Volcker found he had an ally. Margaret Thatcher’s ‘big bang’ reforms to the City of London were due to come into effect the following month, and the Bank felt the need to ...”

“... if at all, as a paranoid scold who thought that Superman was potentially fascist, that Batman and Robin could be construed as positive gay role models, and that Wonder Woman’s early adventures had a bondage subtext. (Never mind that such views, without the disapproval of gay role models, have since become received wisdom among ...”

“... funny’, as he had to be ready to do imitations of famous black singers, a football team or Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.Elton and Bernie worked fast: ‘Bernie got the lyrics to “Your Song” over breakfast one morning in Frome Court, handed them to me and I wrote the music in 15 minutes flat.’ He didn’t go around with melodies in his head. ‘I ...”

“... of the Puget Sound urban corridor. Poujade – and Jean-Marie Le Pen – would have had a field day here; as, I’m afraid, will the McCain-Palin ticket in November. Until now, the political leaders who’ve used the movement to their electoral advantage have come to it as outsiders. Reagan the Hollywood actor, Perot the data-processing ...”

“... the canal as her older sister, Stephanie, looks on. I have gone to the bookstore on publication day in my pyjamas and asked them to unbox the new one; it’s back there, I know it. I have twice fumbled through The Biographer’s Tale (2000), a book which seems to take place entirely in a filing cabinet (don’t worry, there are also sadistic pictures). If ...”

“... as a child), he sneered at Hugh Gaitskell for not having any medals to wear on Remembrance Day and he loathed Herbert Morrison, his first boss in the wartime coalition, for having been a conscientious objector in the First World War, calling him ‘a dirty little cockney guttersnipe’. Macmillan’s diary is spattered with abuse of other public ...”

“... to go bust and to ask what the government planned to do about it. ‘It was going to be a bad day,’ Darling says with dry understatement. Brown adopts a different approach. His starting point is Friday, 8 May 2009. He picks it because it was an ordinary day in the life of a prime minister, and he wants us to know how ...”