“... devices left around – the stage-directions, the Hollywood sets and props, or the drollery of white-furred crocodiles and cyanide shoes. But some of these devices are a bit nervous. ‘The Unconscious Imitated by a Cheesecake’ – chapter heading – was perhaps arrived at by chance, through aleatory techniques (not generally much in evidence in this ...”

“... to party.’ The truth, to use Amory’s phrase, is ‘more compact’. According to his chauffeur William Crack, Berners owned a small legless, clavichord made by Arnold Dolmetsch, which he took about with him in the tool compartment of his car, a place where nobody could possibly play on it. This portentous instrument has been a real blessing to both ...”

“... Temple of Apollo’ after Claude Lorrain by William Woollett (1760) Among various unforgettable moments in a life much of which has been spent thinking about landscape in literature and the visual arts was a remark made ten years ago by Kirsty Wark in the programme which follows Newsnight on Fridays, in which she was chairing a discussion of the Gainsborough exhibition then at Tate Britain ...”

“... a box containing the original illustrations from Every Short Story (2012). They tumbled out like a William Blake vision: boggle-eyed angler fish, flying horses, crying demons, brain babies, Amazonian women, scenes of bacchanalia: a smorgasbord of grotesquerie. In another box, I discovered an exquisite book called ‘Morag’s Museum’, which Gray made for ...”

“... his special friend and constant adviser, the former advertising mogul he made director of the CIA, William Casey. Casey and the gang of right-wing fanatics he quickly promoted to the White House were obsessed with the clandestine. They didn’t think much of elected politicians, and preferred to carry out their policies ...”

“... hellish cacophony of sounds, ranging from screaming rabbits to Buddhist chants. The FBI director, William Sessions, began to worry that his men were suffering from fatigue. Concluding that no more cult members would be released, Sessions and Janet Reno, the newly-appointed Attorney-General who was in overall charge of the operation, decided to smoke out the ...”

“... local Powhatans, pitied as benighted pagans. The other two graves were of military captains: William West, killed fighting the Powhatans, and Gabriel Archer, an enemy of Captain John Smith, a self-aggrandising swashbuckler and leader of the Virginia Colony. All four died between 1608 or 1610, years remembered as ‘the starving time’, when desperate ...”

“... in the US and abroad; American Dreamers (2011), about the 20th-century left; and a biography of William Jennings Bryan, published in 2006, which attempted to rescue its protagonist from what E.P. Thompson in a different context called ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’. (Condescension regarding Bryan emanates from secular urban liberals who know ...”

“... a whole, but the combination of conservative religion and nationalism is dominant across most of white, small-town, rural and often even suburban America. The county-by-county breakdown of the election results shows the Republicans winning even in upstate New York and throughout the interior of California, Oregon and Washington. With the exception of the big ...”

“... his diary: ‘The peeresses en bloc the most ravishing sight – like a bed of auricula-eyed sweet william.’) The photographs he took later that day at the palace include some stiff and unsurprising tableaux involving queen and consort, assorted cousins and ladies-in-waiting. But there are echoes of the early work’s graphic brio: Princess Anne, nearly ...”

“... novel that Sasnal started to get noticed ten years ago. Blowing up Spiegelman’s black and white frames with their captions removed, Sasnal nudged at the story’s grim content with the tersest of signifiers. One way, this was a quizzical take on the notion that painting might report on history: another, it was a fan’s tribute handiwork. So much in ...”

“... separating from its bound pages. Beth Gibbons sings the play’s last lines – ‘lyrics by William Shakespeare’, the acknowledgment reads – with their plea for mercy and indulgence: And my ending is despair Unless I be relieved by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardoned ...”

“... charged with the crime was an antisemite who despised Trump as a weakling incapable of defending white America. Neither the attempted terror bombings nor the mass shooting could be linked to the president, but it was impossible to dissociate them from the frequent brutality of Trump’s words and gestures, the mayhem he sponsors, the people he makes ...”

“... Camargue hat, tumbling tie once black, rimless monocle on a black ribbon, a Van Dyck beard so white it looks dyed. In all so distinguished a figure that some Wamps wag once said of him that when he comes shambling along to the club the very dogs in the street stop smelling one another and bow to him. And then, that Olympian name! Removed from fame by a ...”

“... merely a quarter of a fifth of those so far available, but one would not want the volume longer. William Walton is no prose stylist, not much of an anecdotalist, and his letters reveal remarkably little about him. They are nearly always utilitarian – money, advice, favours to be sought, contracts to be finalised, parts to be corrected, a libretto to be ...”