“... some 90 minutes from Los Angeles. Since Sylvère begins teaching again in January, they will soon be returning to New York. Over dinner the two men discuss recent trends in postmodern critical theory and Chris, who is no intellectual, notices Dick making continual eye contact with her … So go the first eight and a half lines of Chris Kraus’s scandalous ...”

“... week he spent with her in hospital before her death. Mother and son watch each other intently day by day, barely speaking, as he reconstructs her life from the beginning: the poverty of her childhood; the opportunist marriage to the middle-class Désiré Simenon; her bitterness over her husband’s failure to earn a decent living; her introduction of lodgers ...”

“... In​ the 12th and 13th centuries, judges would be sent out from Westminster every seven years to adjudicate on any disputes that had come about since their last sojourn. In 1292, in Shropshire, Alice Knotte complained that Thomas Champeneys ‘detaineth from her seven shillings in money and a surcoat of the value of three shillings ...”

“... has proved remarkably buoyant. Old Etonians and alumni of the Bullingdon Club continue to thrive. By contrast their antagonists of forty years ago, the police and the press, have fared less well. This side of the Stephen Lawrence case and the phone-hacking trials neither has the same level of credibility they enjoyed in the 1970s.Born in 1934, Lucan would ...”

“... us would struggle to move around and stay alive. Twice as much oxygen, on the other hand, would be wonderful to breathe, but terrestrial life would be consumed by fire; in an atmosphere that rich, even damp wood burns well, fires could not ...”

“... and he set to work on a thriller, using as his models Alistair MacLean and the Travis McGee series by John MacDonald, which focuses on a happy-go-lucky investigator with a romantic code of honour. Grant’s first stab at a name for his hero was Franklin, but one day, in an Asda in Kendal, his wife watched him grab something from a high shelf and remarked ...”

“... mobility. He was the valedictorian at his prestigious high school, and a wealthy banker, moved by his speech, offered to pay all the expenses at whichever university he chose. He studied microbiology at Yale, but never stopped selling or using drugs. In 2011, at the age of 30, he was the victim of a gangland execution. In the conversations about the deaths ...”

“... to the court of Queen Victoria. I can’t say that it brought me any closer to Runciman. He seemed by then a personage quite as remote as Prince Albert, too lacquered in anecdote for there to be any question of getting to know him. His reputation as a historian was past its peak: it was as a figure that he was famous, a ...”

“... and began to explore the neighbouring Palestinian villages. He made friends, learned Arabic, and by being there found out about the lives of Palestinians under the occupation. He worked as a floorer before beginning his academic career. He reads the Bible but no longer considers himself ‘religious’. He goes ‘more often to Hebron than to Tel Aviv and ...”

“... diary is a ruse just like her modesty. It’s a cover for her unladylike ambitions – to be an author and to be in charge of her life. Romance offers girls the opportunity to gain the upper hand, but a diary, to adapt a Wildean aphorism, gives a more lasting pleasure, the chance for a lifelong romance with ...”

“... healthcare of the future would take place in general hospitals, and the number of beds would be halved, with care in the local community preferred wherever possible. Powell spoke in stirring and martial terms of setting ‘the torch to the funeral pyre’, ‘the defences we have to storm’ and ‘their powers of resistance to our assault’, to an ...”

“... a confession but a boast when he tells an interviewer: ‘I’m an incredible non-art lover.’ By that time he was a member of the English faculty at Cornell, where he taught for thirty years and lived for the rest of his life. Part of what ‘non-art’ means for Ammons is described in an early poem as ‘the non-song/in my singing’. Singing is usually ...”

“... discouraging, it’s unlikely that Tony Harrison would have gone on to write as much as he has: by my calculation, 13 plays, 11 films and twenty or more poetry collections and pamphlets, not to mention the essays and addresses assembled in Edith Hall’s edition of his selected prose. That teacher, commemorated but unnamed in the poem ‘Them & [uz]’, was ...”

“... It’s a truth not quite so universally acknowledged that the semi-final against Denmark was won by the amazing Raheem Sterling taking an equally amazing dive to earn a penalty in extra time. It’s the kind of action that draws furious condemnation from opponents (sorry Denmark!) and neutrals (sorry world!) but gets laughed off, glossed over or celebrated ...”

“... the shows should mirror each other across several themes in ten galleries each. Delayed for a year by the pandemic, the retrospective arrives when Johns has turned 91 – an essential figure in the eyes of almost everyone who cares about postwar art.*Johns made an exceptional entrance in early 1958: his first show at the new Leo Castelli Gallery nearly sold ...”