“... a significant anniversary; it is 350 years since the final version of the book was authorised by Parliament in 1662. It comes hard on the heels of the quatercentenary celebrations last year for another milestone of Stuart English prose composition, the King James Bible, and although I was surprised by the large amount ...”

“... the locals all assumed he was a gangster. ‘They think any Russian who drives a Lexus has to be mafia. The whole gangster thing was way back, in the 1990s, but they can’t believe Russian immigrants could make it by just working hard.’ Eddie, it has to be said, looks like a ...”

“... MPs, the honorand of universities. He was Britain’s first literary celebrity, at least to judge by the throng that hailed him outside Berwick as he journeyed to Scotland on foot in 1618 – though he went not for charity, as he might today, but (it seems) for a bet. His early reputation is now a surprise. His poems, though frequently studied in ...”

“... the project twice, in the 1970s and 1990s, and slowed it down again in 2009: it was supposed to be finished in time for the Olympics, then budget cuts forced the completion date forward to 2018. Now, at least, construction is irreversibly underway, despite general indignation over the disruption it’s caused and who stands to benefit most from it – the ...”

“... from London. Assembly elections were taking place in India – they have been taking place, phase by phase, since the beginning of April – and there would be new governments in at least some states. In most states there is a shift in control every five or ten years; the non-ideological alliances of compromise and mutual ...”

“... necessity of some of the matériel in his admittedly fabulous argumentative armamentarium. I’ll be jiggered if I survive death on Johnston’s terms; I don’t know whether he holds out much hope for himself. And his success won’t please anyone who believes in anything supernatural. Any conception of God as essentially a supernatural being is idolatry in ...”

“... to replace Mubarak, the SCAF was forced instead to co-operate with the ministry to avert chaos. By the summer of 2012, it was ready to hand over government to anyone who seemed reasonably capable, so long as they pledged to respect the military’s status. The Muslim Brotherhood was the most plausible candidate. Its familiar willingness to appease whoever ...”

“... to the (very slightly) variant worlds when she dies in them, but then how would this information be conveyed? It’s a religious problem more than one of narrative technique. At some points, though, Ursula sacrifices herself for others, which would be an empty act if the world she was leaving ceased to exist. The cosmology ...”

“... until you have a substantive conception of the natural in relation to which something can be classified as non-natural. I do have one: I take it that concrete reality – anything that exists in space-time – is entirely physical. I’m a physicalist naturalist, and I think metaphysical naturalism is the same thing as physicalism as I’ve just ...”

“... of 15, ‘nymphomaniac’, ‘hyperactive’, ‘coked up to the eyeballs’ and eavesdropped on by Lucie every morning as she stuffs ‘her face with muffins and Coca-Cola’ in the café next door to her expensive school. Only two things mark out Valentine from the other rich, pretty, sad girls in the café by the ...”

“... he drives, which after the latest bout of arthritis in my ankle, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do.7 January, Yorkshire. On the war memorial at Malham is the inscription:Live thou for EnglandWe for England diedI don’t know if this is a quotation, or an injunction that was, as it were, custom-made, but I find it – if only slightly ...”

“... Blondie (1980) and in Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie (1982), an autobiography ghosted by Victor Bockris but written, supposedly, by Harry herself, in collaboration with her guitarist and then lover, Chris Stein.This new memoir is also ghosted, by Sylvie Simmons, and is ...”

“... cane fields and enslaved labour to return home, safe in the expectation that his plantations could be managed from a distance while he enjoyed a life of leisure. He had been keen to return to ‘his dear Native Land’, determined that his children should receive an English education. ‘I can no more be happy here than ...”

“... the tables of Le Catalan, a restaurant on the Left Bank, and was equally underwhelmed. Surrounded by friends and his lover Dora Maar, Picasso was 61 and greying. He possessed a certain magnetism, it was true, but he looked nothing like the ‘handsome animal’ in the Man Ray photographs Gilot had seen in Cahiers d’art: ‘dark hair, bright flashing ...”

“... If you know​ anything about Magnus Carlsen, you probably know that he is supposed to be making chess cool. Before he was twenty, he was the subject of two books and a film; in the years since – he’s now 28 and the world’s best chess player – he has been one of Cosmopolitan’s sexiest men and one of Time’s hundred most influential ...”