“... anguish was the approach here, and it paid off. Yet his former classmate and devoted friend Ernest Delahaye tells us that much of the poetry was frogmarched into existence, ‘murmured’ forth as the poet exercised his lower limbs in the name of his high calling – ‘a senseless and infinite impulse towards invisible splendours and imperceptible ...”

“... bananas. ‘C’est l’homme qui a conquis l’air!’ they cried. ‘Il n’est pas bluffeur!’ Ernest Archdeacon of L’Aero-Club de France, one of the most prominent sceptics, had been denouncing Wilbur as an impostor even from the stands at Le Mans. That was before take-off. He now announced: ‘I feel an intense pleasure in counting myself among the ...”

“... realism; though with both countries still producing permafrosted academic painting. It may now be clear that it was the French who were to make the future of art; but at the time there was lively curiosity and interchange between Paris and London. Charles Deschamps, who sold Henry Hill his pictures, was a patron and friend of Rossetti, Ford Madox ...”

“... In May 1895, the day before Oscar Wilde’s trial began, W.B. Yeats called at Wilde’s mother’s house in London to express his solidarity and that of ‘some of our Dublin literary men’ with the family. He later wrote of ‘the Britisher’s jealousy of art and artists, which is generally dormant but called into activity when the artist has gone outside his field into publicity of an undesirable kind ...”

“... an ambush ten days later. W.T. Cosgrave then succeeded to the leadership. The Civil War ended in May 1923 with the defeat of the Republicans. Three years later de Valera split from the Republicans and formed his own party, Fianna Fail, which entered the Dáil in 1927 and was elected to government in 1932. That the Dáil Government, operating underground ...”

“... which records the birthdays of various contemporary literary figures. Here is Dennis Potter on 17 May, Michael Frayn on 8 September, Edna O’Brien on 15 December, and so naturally I turn to my own birthday. May 9 is blank except for the note: ‘The first British self-service launderette is opened on Queensway, London ...”

“... he informed the book’s publishers in a late-life flash of his earlier manner, ‘you may say that this is the greatest novel ever written – which indeed it is.’ By then, though, the drink had taken its toll, and he died in 1930. His last decline began with a nasty fall, which took place while he was being ejected from the Trocadero restaurant ...”

“... of revenge on Samuel Butler’s part (prudently delayed until after his death), but his surrogate Ernest Pontifex could at least claim he had gained from his upbringing an education in the authoritarianism and hypocrisy that operate so strongly in the wider world. There seem to be no lessons to be learned from the Justus family except the wisdom of being born ...”

“... the psychoanalyst Dominique-Octave Mannoni, the literary critic Roger Caillois and the philologist Ernest Renan. Césaire’s trademark oscillation is a key feature of the Discourse on Colonialism. First he makes ‘a systematic defence of the societies destroyed by imperialism’, celebrating their communalism and co-operativeness, and mocking the European ...”

“... the psychoanalytical literature, his reactions were not without a touch of sceptical irreverence (Ernest Jones becomes ‘Erogenous Jones’); and a whole tradition of thought about the cogito and the unconscious, from Descartes to Lacan, was later summarised and parodied in the wonderful exchange between the two anti-heroes of the novel Mercier and ...”

“... I suppose a cork-lined carriage. The ‘Marcel Proust’ might be a good name for a train. 16 May. Philip Roth’s face in a photograph by Nancy Crampton on the jacket of his new novel, Everyman, is as stern and ungiving as a self-portrait by Rembrandt. 30 May, Yorkshire. Not one in fifty people knows how to restore or ...”

“... the biographies but the life stories of the people who wrote them. His 19th-century biographer Ernest Hamel worshipped him, the socialist historians Mathiez and Lefebvre championed him, George Sand called him ‘the greatest man not only of the Revolution but of all known history’. Lord Acton described him as ‘the most hateful character in the ...”

“... to mature in the British intelligence community. In a letter circulated to all chief constables in May 1934, MI5’s director general, Vernon Kell, explained that fascism was, to a great extent, ‘a natural reaction from communism’. This thesis, if something so underdeveloped can be called that, was widely shared in Whitehall. When Hugh Trevor-Roper joined ...”

“... handed to Ceylon’s elite on a platter. ‘Think of Ceylon as a little bit of England,’ Oliver Ernest Goonetilleke, the first native governor-general, said. This was a point of pride. Don Stephen Senanayake, the country’s first prime minister, remarked: ‘There has been no rebellion in Ceylon, no non-cooperation movement and no fifth column. We were ...”

“... to chair the SNC but was kept on a short leash, being re-elected only for three-month terms. By May 2012 he had abandoned his opposition to the militarisation of the anti-Assad movement, but then abruptly decided that his position had become untenable and resigned. On 11 November 2012 a new body to speak for the Syrian opposition abroad was established, the ...”