“... Hearing the news on the Today programme this morning R. nearly cries. I met Bowie only once, at John Schlesinger’s sometime in the 1980s, and remember him as a slight, almost colourless figure, who was somehow Scots. M. calls later and recalls how someone he knew picked up Bowie when he was still David Jones. He offered to come round, bringing his guitar ...”

“... In Europe, he met all the great figures of the day: Voltaire, Condorcet, Marie-Antoinette, Captain Cook, Boswell, Johnson (on 1 May 1760, at a meeting to promote ‘the education of Negroes in America’). He also met the exponents of the free market Adam Smith and Bernard Mandeville. But though he delighted in their company, he scarcely needed to pick their ...”

“... history that displays her influence seems very local, mostly confined to the New York poetry of John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara or the writing of Andy Warhol, though in fact so much of Hemingway’s manner of writing – the short, paratactic sentences, the use of repetition, the idea of removing the obvious subject – was taken from her, so the whole ...”

“... wideboys? Doubtless it was never quite so cut and dried. Skim the sub rosa lit of the time (Robin Cook, Alexander Baron, Colin MacInnes) and you’re plunged into a lost river with discrete but commingled tributaries: gay, criminal, East End Jewish, upper-class drop-out, lower-class dandy; the ‘morries’ of Cook’s ...”

“... too good to resist. ‘This officer of artillery never misses an opportunity for attack,’ John Gawsworth, an admiring contemporary, observed. William Rothenstein thought him ‘armed and armoured, like a tank, ready to cross any country, however rough and hostile’. He certainly had a genius for pugnacity, no doubt partly encouraged by the example ...”

“... though I’d have thought the chances of him persuading his mamma to come are pretty slim. John Gielgud was once telling me about Mrs Simpson and how smart she was. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘she’d have made a disastrous queen. Didn’t go to the theatre at all.’ 19 January. Alan Bates opens tonight at the Barbican in the RSC production of Antony ...”

“... things do not change significantly: the servants are in a state of permanent revolution; when the cook leaves, Grandma cooks (appallingly) and her grandfather goes off to an hotel. At first, the young orphan is intimidated and submissive to her new role, her only reaction a series of psychosomatic illnesses. Gradually, though, she realises the absurdity and ...”

“... In a cannibal society it may be in a position to explain to the eccentric who declines to kill and cook his fellows that his squeamishness is a reaction formation against his fiercer than average impulses, but it cannot in itself pronounce on or relieve him of the responsibility of deciding about the moral standing of cannibalism. Freud cast more illuminating ...”

“... that Dad would see the irony of warning me against unmasculine behaviour while expecting me to cook and serve his meals. He liked to be waited on, even in small matters like the clicking of tiny saccharine pellets from a dispenser into his tea. In any case, kitchen tasks would demand energy that should be devoted to preparing his case. This was a lawyer ...”

“... last travelling Highland dance teachers’. Eventually, Henderson’s mother took a position as a cook-housekeeper in a large house near Yeovil: a part of Somerset still rich in traditional song. She managed to send Hamish to board at a small prep school on the coast near Teignmouth, where he impressed the headmaster, who became his guardian after his mother ...”

“... a moccasin snake with her riding crop). The Langhorne family’s meals were prepared by a Negro cook and butler. ‘Don’t kill him, Dab,’ Nancy’s mother cajoled, to save the butler from an act of violence when he tripped one day while carrying a tureen of oyster stew. Chillie never lost his prejudice against the Damyankees or his conviction that work ...”

“... without any passport or visa checks. One hundred and thirty chefs had been flown in from India to cook ‘strictly vegetarian’ Chinese, Greek, Italian, Indian, Mexican, South African and Thai food. Personal servants were allocated to the most important guests. South African attendees included President Zuma’s daughter Duduzile, his son Duduzane ...”

“... tally with feminism. Her fictional women compete for male attention; they type men’s theses and cook their dinners. There is no challenge to male power in the novels (and indeed why should there be?).In ‘the brutal 1960s’, as Bob Smith called them, Pym’s letters slide towards predictable Tory attitudes – disparagement of the welfare state, of ...”

“... family. His father was a prosperous solicitor, and the substantial family home was serviced by a cook, a gardener and a live-in maid. One of Hill’s college friends who visited in the mid-1930s recalled a ‘magnificent residence’, the grounds of which included a river and a tennis court: ‘A servant brought us lunch at a table on the ...”

“... Thomas’s death the family fractured. Frances ran away, abandoning the children to her parents, John and Alice Jennings. When she reappeared two months later it was to take over the lease on the Moorfields stables and transfer it to her new young husband, William Rawlings. Her parents watched as she drove their once prosperous business into the ...”