“... she favoured black silk cloaks and trousers, tricorn hats, blood-red lipstick and cadaverish white face-powder – Tallulah Bankhead was not the only acquaintance to nickname her ‘Countess Dracula’. Yet such was de Acosta’s sinister allure she managed to bed just about everybody who was anybody in the sapphic world of her time: from Isadora ...”

“... was one of shiny appliances, finned automobiles with hood ornaments fit for Vikings, black and white television sets piping perky laugh-track entertainment into the living room as the kids did their homework lying on the rug, backyard barbecues, pool parties, and drunken passes and spats at cocktail parties that entered local lore. Updike’s early stories ...”

“... editors, ‘I wish to point out to you, an editor of the New Yorker,’ he writes to Katharine White, ‘that Mr West’s review of Augie March is disgraceful … Let us hope that it is only my mental health that is endangered and not that of your readers as well.’ Two weeks later, he is putting on his best shirt for Lionel Trilling. ‘The many ...”

“... to be rich: ‘I already owned five fur coats,’ she wrote in her memoir, ‘so I ordered a white mink, floor length, and wore it with pleasure, even if it did make me look like I was rolling along on casters.’ Despite which, as she discovered, she was being paid less than her male colleagues. Muriel meanwhile battled on against headaches, depression ...”

“... for their own names. Indeed, this has been a central function of indexes since the great days of white male writers, when William F. Buckley sent Norman Mailer a copy of his book The Unmaking of a Mayor and wrote ‘Hi!’ in the index next to Mailer’s name. Job’s comforters will want to be the first to tell you that ...”

“... in jail and in imminent danger of execution. When they emerged from prison, he was prematurely white-haired, and she was a semi-invalid who would be remembered as ‘capricious impatient, wasteful, a victim of recurring migraines, and afflicted with a profound, constant melancholy’. For the next thirty years, Hervé was engaged in repairing the damage ...”

“... spoiled darling left behind in the Home Counties’. But his most furious barbs are reserved for Norman Podhoretz, the reactionary editor of Commentary. Hitchens seems almost obsessed by him, returning to the attack over and over again. It is a curious fact that Podhoretz, an immodest man who has much about which to be modest, so got under the skin of ...”

“... of American art of the 20th century, to co-curate the present exhibition with the old firm of Norman Rosenthal and Christos Joachimides. After three meetings – which were very enjoyable though they threatened squalls ahead – and some subsequent interchanges with Rosenthal, I realised that I had to resign rather than go on taking up a great deal of ...”

“... was unable to come to the conference.’ Perhaps Gilbert was simply busy, or recuperating from a white-water rafting or a hang-gliding contretemps. But of course the words can also be interpreted to mean that Gilbert was invited, but not offered the co-chairmanship. One must be practical after all: the gentlemen of Pennzoil might never have heard of ...”

“... other ‘wet’ challengers from the inside who had been cast aside by Thatcher – Mark Carlisle, Norman St John Stevas, Sir Ian Gilmour – Prior was not made of the stuff to fight the leader of his own party. A mild, bumbling man, he preferred not to step out of line. Michael Heseltine was different. Rich, abrasive and ambitious, Heseltine was fed up with ...”

“... words of the book’s last page: ‘Through his father – who knew nothing of Gorteen, Duntally, Norman towers, and lonely headlands – the uncanny facial resemblance, the poetry, the wild blood had been transferred across the Atlantic Ocean to this cold winter land, to this, his father’s harsh native city in which he now lay dying. He looked at his ...”

“... next thing he did was strangle him with an old tie (after making sure his dog, Bleep, a black and white mongrel bitch, was out of the way). He washed the body and dusted it with talcum powder, then he went back to bed, where he spent the night with Bleep and the corpse. Here in this cell he is still with me. In fact I believe he is me, or part of me. How can ...”

“... As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer … From the mountains, to the prairies, To the oceans, white with foam God bless America, My home sweet home. Goddamnit: in the end, everything gets alloyed in the melting pot, including Guthrie, all-American hero. ‘For a man who fought all his life against being respectable, this comes as a stunning ...”

“... dispelled by recovering its sources and trying to turn their potency to benign ends. Like any good white magician, Syberberg insists that rationalist denials of evil can only end in specious evasion. Hence his bold use of Wagner throughout, not so much to point a historical lesson as to invade and numb the senses. We are encouraged to let ourselves become ...”

“... would have found the goings-on particularly funny, although he might well have found them stylish. Norman Hartnell designed some very pretty dresses for The Bedder’s Opera in 1922. There are illustrations to show what he looked like wearing them. He was particularly seductive in an off-the-shoulder number with roses appliquéd at the bustline and scattered ...”