“... To cook crack​ you need cocaine, water, baking soda, a heat source (microwave, stove, torch, cigarette lighter) and a spoon or a jar of the right thickness. Disregard the occasional splintered jar or finger burn, and the advantages of cooking for yourself are mostly to do with customer service. You’re less likely to get ripped off or have a gun pointed at your head: powder cocaine dealers are easier to find and more reliable ...”

“... The date was 24 March 1847; the place was the home of a friend on Hill Street in Hannibal, where John Clemens had taken to his bed with a cold that developed into pneumonia. It was in that room, only minutes before his father’s final rattling breaths, that young Sam for the first time watched one member of his family kiss another. His dying father ‘put ...”

“... by Cape in 1980, and then by Penguin and Vintage, except with a new, enthusiastic introduction by John Banville and a useful short bibliography. Bowen is one of those rare writers who is equally good at novels and short stories; in fact, because her novels are short, densely written, formally deliberate, it’s not easy to particularise any difference between ...”

“... less keen on Claude, who had – he was sure – inherited his mother’s wilfulness. They hired a cook and a gardener, but it was mostly left to Gilot to care for the children. She would wash and feed and dress them before coaxing Picasso – not a morning person – out of bed with a ‘café au lait and two pieces of salt-free dried toast’. With Sabartés ...”

“... of Shanghai’s millions of Chinese inhabitants. Ballard’s attempts to befriend the son of the cook, a boy his age, got nowhere. But still, he could gaze out of the window of his parents’ big American car as the chauffeur drove him and his nanny through the city, marvelling at the ‘bright but bloody kaleidoscope’ outside: ‘the prosperous Chinese ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”