“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Plomley’s ever-courteous, pedestrian questions with a stream of weary, slightly scornful ‘no’s.The unexpected treasure accrued by the show’s longevity is that you can hear her do this. Since 2011, when Plomley’s family finally reached an agreement with the BBC over copyright, some 2360 episodes have come online, available as podcasts. (One ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... These biographies of John Gielgud by Jonathan Croall and Sheridan Morley are quite hard to tell apart. They are of much the same size, bear handsome pictures of the actor in old age on the front of their dust-jackets, and are, inevitably, affectionate and indulgent towards their subject. As Dirk Bogarde remarked when Croall consulted him about the work in hand, ‘everybody adored him, so the book might make rather flat reading ...”

“... in my room I would doggedly read and annotate them in neat, scrupulous handwriting. But I made no conscious connection between these activities and my state of mind. When I got back to England I was in a state of high excitement. One night a couple of months after my return, seated at my desk upstairs overlooking the street in our North London suburb with ...”

“... page one we as good as know that the child whose story this is had the kind of start in life that no child ought to have, but which cohorts of French boys no doubt did have. The bad times did not end soon, or ever, for this writer, once he’d made his escape from being beaten at home and bullied in school after school. The ...”

“... description. Touch of humour. Smart dialogue. A twist in the ending.’ But I am here and me and no one says anything. ‘So,’ I say. ‘Shall we take –’ ‘Five minutes to think about it?’ Moses suggests. He knows the routine. If his grin is weary, so perhaps is mine. This is Form 4B. Average age 18. Open questions are a novelty. It is ...”