“... for his work in Hollywood, Conrad tartly observes, combines ‘existential reprimand with a middle-class Philistine’s envy of the rewards’. Wherever you turn in this book Conrad sounds brisk, assured, giddy in his confident marshalling of terms, patterns, brisk, assured and misleading. He is anxious always to be dazzling, outrageous, ‘brilliant’ in ...”

“... theory. Some analysts attribute this to the demographic contraction of the traditional working-class base, some to the lack of appeal of collectivist and socialist values, and yet others to the apparent dominance of sectarian extremists in the Party, particularly in local government. Whatever the combination of reasons for Labour’s loss of appeal, the ...”

“... a one-time security man, Duszek, once instructed to eliminate Konwicki in the early days after the war, but now thoroughly mellowed out, and given to uttering gnomic pieces of folk wisdom about the Poles, little gems like ‘Drink makes a Pole merry,’ ‘When a Pole complains, he feels better right away,’ ‘When a Pole sees a balcony, he wants to ...”

“... in French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, or British Malaya and Singapore till after World War Two. From very early on, Rizal exhibited remarkable literary abilities. At the age of 19 he entered an open literary competition, and won first prize, defeating Spanish rivals writing in their native tongue. He was growing up at a time when modern politics ...”

“... and it is getting worse. Massey and Denton found its racial segregation particularly resistant to class advancement – even when black people earned more money it made relatively little difference to the degree of segregation they experienced. The idea that blacks could improve their circumstances by working hard at school, going to college and getting a ...”

“... and Gérald Darmanin as minister of public action and accounts. His most prominent spoil of war on the left was the PS’s Gérard Collomb, who accepted the ministry of the interior (a difficult job, which carries responsibility for the treatment of migrants and refugees). Other important posts were offered to people who had made their names in the ...”

“... Wyatt was awarded a one-year contract for the then substantial salary of £2800, with ‘first-class travel throughout’. Within months, it was being remarked in newspapers that Wyatt’s melodramatic but pioneering location reports (‘To my right, are Africa and Egypt . . . Behind me is Gibraltar’) were making him more influential than he had been as ...”

“... So Rankin gave James Kelman’s first book to his father. His sort of thing, I thought. Working-class working man against the system. Dad couldn’t read it. Said it wasn’t ‘written in English’. Said there wasn’t any story. I was shocked. This was literature. It was good for you. It was the stuff I was studying. Dad’s reaction made me think about ...”

“... the general appeal of taking risks. ‘Like the member of a privileged aristocracy, of a libertine class’, Dallek writes, he considered himself ‘entitled to seek out and obtain what he craved, instantly’. Kennedy said that David Cecil’s biography of Lord Melbourne, which depicted young aristocrats having a good time while performing heroic feats in the ...”

“... of the poètes maudits. He was born in Salzburg in 1887, and grew up in a comfortable middle-class home. The picturesque, musical city is a constant presence in his cloying, Fin-de-Siècle early verse, some of which is included here: Ancient squares in sunlit silence. Deep engrossed in blue and gold Dreamlike gentle nuns are hastening Under sultry ...”

“... in Le Havre: something of what life was like in that port of entry during the First World War, for a boy keen on identifying the nationalities and even the regiments of foreign soldiers disembarking in it, is to be gathered from the sixth of the novels included here, Un rude hiver. The boy Queneau came, for reasons that I don’t know he ever spelled ...”

“... the wild grotesque of Carl Hiaasen. There’s nothing mythical about its depiction of lower-middle-class American life. The crimes are committed either for prosaic reasons – life insurance features prominently – or they are motiveless and shocking acts of violence: an 18-month-old baby is killed after being accidentally kidnapped during a routine car ...”

“... Neville depicted Porter as Seth, a knuckle-cracking, gawky Australian detester of ‘the English Class Thing’. Jannice went on writing to Micklem after her marriage. She and Porter had two daughters, but there were quarrels, resentments, silences. Each had affairs. By the 1970s, when Porter was establishing himself as a poet, the marriage was in ...”

“... legacy of 17th-century radicalism. By the 18th century, the Good Old Cause of the Civil War had been revised to meet contemporary tastes and susceptibilities, with Puritanism given a classical, if only partly Augustan veneer. Ironically, in 18th-century Ireland it was Presbyterians of this classical republican stamp – not Catholics – who tended ...”

“... you look like a clown or give you heavy metal poisoning. Even so, at the start of the First World War, the market for ‘commercial colour cosmetics’ (i.e. make-up) remained ‘small compared to that for skin creams’ – in large part because ‘face paint’ was associated with ‘prostitutes or, at best, actresses’. Yet by the time the Second World ...”