“... the camera of choice after the astronaut Walter Schirra – ‘Jolly Wally’ – bought one and took it with him on a Mercury mission to orbit the earth in 1962. The film which Eastman Kodak then made for Nasa was so thin that a roll could accommodate two hundred frames, rather than the usual 12. ‘They would loan us a Hasselblad and we would take it home ...”

“... me over with pride, as if I were their successful creation.When Petrushevskaya was nine her mother took her back to Moscow. Valentina worked, but the family continued to live in immense poverty, and Petrushevskaya continued to be moved around, from underneath her uncle’s kitchen table to an orphanage, then to a children’s sanatorium. In the sanatorium, at ...”

“... is that the minorities were not always on bad terms with the Vietnamese people, but repeatedly took part with them in risings against oppressive governments – as subject tribes in the Asian border-lands sometimes did with Russian peasant rebels – and also in barring the way to outsiders. To all this collective character-building must be added the harsh ...”

“... for questions. The tale of Hylas, for instance, is one of the better-known episodes, thanks to John William Waterhouse’s painting with its loved-up, spaced-out nymphs. Casually, Apollonius drops a bombshell: Hercules had adopted the boy, he says, after killing his father. He alludes to some dispute over an ox, but has no time to explain: ‘these tales ...”

“... As Berlin excellently points out, however, there is no difficulty in seeing how the neo-Hegelians took their thesis, without any incoherence, to be one about human freedom. The claim they are advancing is that if, and only if, we actually follow the most fulfilling way of life shall we overcome the constraints and obstacles to our realisation of our full ...”

“... in his second marriage (his first wife died of consumption shortly after their wedding), he took on mistresses, while remaining on affectionate terms with the second wife, from whom he mostly lived apart. When confronted with problems outside his control, he concentrated on soluble problems. When tricked or cheated, he neither brooded nor held ...”

“... was homosexual.’ Thirty years later, when Eliot’s prestige and influence were at their zenith, John Peter, a Canadian academic, published an article in Essays in Criticism called ‘A New Interpretation of The Waste Land’. Peter argued that the poem was at heart an elegy that might be compared to Tennyson’s In Memoriam: ‘At some previous time the ...”

“... it’s always good to find new species – but there is no missing the sheer delight Banks took in going about it. Banksian collecting involved tramping, climbing, shooting and fishing. He was a plant hunter as much as he was a collector. Later in life, Banks would get fat and gouty, but in his twenties he was a fit and active sportsman. He also ...”

“... House (where I do not pee). It’s the home of the Lascelles family, an ancestor of which, John Lascelles, blew the gaffe on Catherine Howard, the king’s fifth wife, but was later culled himself in the purge of evangelicals during that dreadful monarch’s last years. I watch two of the now well-established red kites tumbling about the sky above the ...”

“... and gave no press interviews until his final decade. All this through a period when artists took over the colour supplements, and the easel painter seemed vieux jeu compared to the collager, silk-screener, installer, conceptualist, video-maker, performer, neon-signer and stone-arranger. There was much art babble, and newcomers were expected to provide ...”

“... was 11, leaving the family $8 after funeral expenses had been paid. Frost’s mother, Isabelle, took Robert and his sister east from San Francisco to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where they lived initially with her parents-in-law before Isabelle tried – with mixed results – to hold down a job as a teacher. Frost was many things before he was a poet; by the ...”

“... the United States, teaching poetry at various universities and especially at Harvard; in 1974 she took an apartment in Boston. She died in the winter of 1979. So far as appearances go, her life was not dramatic. But one never knows about drama. There was, however, one piece of evidence which suggested drama. In 1970 Robert Lowell published ‘Four Poems for ...”

“... discord and certainly underplays the impact it had on McCluskie. Terry McCluskie’s real name is John Terrence Woods. Barbara Woolvine, his mother, who grew up in Liverpool, left school early and by the time she was 16 was managing a café in the holiday town of South-port. Ms Woolvine describes Terry’s real father, Terry Woods, as ‘not a very dependable ...”

“... people chasing a house and the supply of new homes reached a tipping point, average house prices took off like a rocket, trebling between Tony Blair’s accession and the 2008 crash. (In Tower Hamlets, prices went up three and a half times.) Even allowing for inflation over that period of time (36 per cent) it’s a terrifying increase.The chart only shows ...”

“... of 81.4 kilograms, to 279 addresses. Sandd claimed this should take six hours; Leijten said it took eight. For this he was paid a little over 27 euros – not much more than €3 an hour. Sandd promotes the job as a ‘bijbaan’, a bit of work on the side for somebody who wants fresh air and exercise and already has a state pension, is studying or has a ...”