“... York’s West Side. There was no kitchen. Hotplates were not permitted. The bathroom was down the hall, but rooms in such hotels tended to have a sink, resulting in a painful test of character for the young Stone and his ‘quite prudish’ mother. ‘Once you had pissed in the sink,’ Stone wrote later, ‘you belonged to the fallen world around you … To ...”

“... a naughty joke he might let fly – stamping of feet was our reply. 9 Supper. The regal dining hall graced by the likeness of Henry the Eighth – those tight-sheathed calves, that beard – all by the sumptuous Holbein limned; inside that singularly towering hall that choir lofts made appear so tall, it was perpetually ...”

“... which looked for a while as if it would be carried overwhelmingly. It was sponsored by Senator John Briggs, creepily played by Denis O’Hare, and was intended to ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools. It said that any teacher ‘advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting’ homosexual activity could be fired. Quite a large mandate, and ...”

“... the largest accumulation of stone blocks in Europe. Its architect, Joseph Poelaert, inspired by John Martin’s scenes of apocalyptic ruin, had been fantasising about such a structure for years before he won the commission to design the new Palais in 1861. Time passed, costs swelled from four million to fifty million francs, Poelaert died in 1879 and four ...”

“... West Virginia. When she gets out, her initial return to singing is a triumph. She fills Carnegie Hall and one of the film’s best scenes shows her performance there. She’s a little nervous, not quite the laughing seductress we’ve seen before. She says to the audience: ‘I’m back.’ And after a pause: ‘Jail was fun.’ Then she sings ‘Ain’t ...”

“... Cret, chair of the steering group of the American Battle Monuments Committee, told the architect, John Russell Pope, in 1925: ‘This is the most important monument and for this reason it has been entrusted to you.’ Pope was one of the most successful and visible American architects of the era – he designed the National Gallery in Washington, the ...”

“... as a dutiful widow is the best source for his life. He did not have to worry about the pram in the hall, and his wealth enabled him from the age of 50 to devote his time to the ancient world. But even with these advantages, the History of Greece, ranging ‘from the earliest period to the close of the generation contemporary with Alexander the Great’, was a ...”

“... In​ 1978, Jacqueline Onassis thought it a good idea for her teenage son John to spend some months away from New York with the Youth Conservation Corps of the Yellowstone National Park. But John didn’t fit in, so she rang John Perry Barlow, a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and owner of a twenty-thousand-acre Wyoming ranch ...”

“... of Desert Island Discs’ ten best episodes. Many included Yoko Ono on being hated and witnessing John Lennon’s murder, the actor Stephen Graham on his suicide attempt, Maya Angelou on childhood trauma, Simon Cowell boasting, Alfred Wainwright on his last walk in the Lakes as his eyes failed (‘the mountains wept for me that day’) and Tom Hanks moved to ...”

“... Maybe it’s just me​, but the publication of John Updike’s selected letters, masterfully assembled and presented by James Schiff, doesn’t appear to have been the parade event that might have been expected. The reviews have been largely laudatory, marbled with tribute to Updike’s impeccable filigree, effortless versatility, unfaltering application and sleek plumage, but I don’t get the sense that the accolades have resonated beyond the baby boomer contingent of Updikeans who matured with the Rabbit Angstrom novels and counted on the continuing nourishment of his presence in the New Yorker ...”

“... of Canterbury in the run-up to Anne Boleyn’s coronation. In a letter printed on 20 October 1890, John Marshall RA proposed an alternative theory: that the skull constituted ‘a punning signature of the great artist’, ‘hohl’ and ‘bein’ being the German (loosely translated) for ‘hollow bone’.There were debates, too, about the identities and ...”

“... the campaign, as a series of media events contrived to produce a predetermined image. Even when John Major defiantly got out his own soap box, it was an artifact, a television prop, a designer soap box. It was a surrender to show business, a triumph of trivia, a debasement of debate. Never in the history of electoral conflict had so little been said by so ...”

“... Except for two years as a fighter pilot in the RAF, John Colville was Churchill’s Private Secretary throughout the war, and again during his peacetime premiership of 1951-5. Some readers will enjoy his diaries mainly as a portrait of Churchill, whose blazing presence and wealth of eccentricity light up almost every page ...”

“... Tower of Blue Horses; a Monet of yachts on a river; Duncan Grant’s Dancers, a cornfield by John Nash. The one original was a watercolour by T.A. McCormack dominated by a Chinese fish plate. Over the years all this moved towards something prettier; the first impulse to modernity was not wholly sustained. Happiness was a professional matter because I ...”