“... sensation for the devotional reader on encountering a text written on parchment, with the words of John 1:14 – ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ – thrumming in their ears. After the hair is removed, the skins are dried and stretched across a frame, known as a herse. The word comes from the French herse, meaning a harrow, and ultimately ...”

“... original members worked for Taylor Woodrow, the construction giant that erected several of John Poulson’s designs (there was an architect who got his priorities right: he could grease a palm up to the elbow). They learned nothing from him.A wrongheaded hierarchy of realities grants primacy to a breezeblock over a painting of a breezeblock, to the ...”

“... in other words, with teacher-student (or teacher-staff) romance. Not only Roth and Coetzee, but John L’Heureux with The Handmaid of Desire, Charles Baxter with A Feast of Love and Tim O’Brien with Tomcat in Love. Even Angela Argo is writing a novel about a teacher-student affair. She is writing it for Swenson’s class. And as she writes it, she lives ...”

“... past tense may be in order. As, ‘Romeo takes Juliet by the hand,’ but ‘at this performance John held Mary’s hand too long.’ It all depends on the context, but distinctions are not precisely observed, as though the author was not used to stage commentary. If he is not, the book is certainly a remarkable achievement. It even gains, as we are being ...”

“... Nobody could be more aware than Professor Passmore of the hazards of writing on the philosophy of teaching. He notes disarmingly that ‘the chance of writing even a reasonably good book on any branch of the philosophy of education is statistically very low indeed. It is terribly difficult to write in a manner which is neither philosophy for philosophy’s sake with an occasional example from teaching, nor just a series of commonplace banalities ...”

“... they can invent big, loud people too. Monk has some difficulty in persuading his agent, Arthur (John Ortiz), to take 0n this extravagant book, but Arthur’s loyalty to Monk conquers his doubts. You can probably guess what happens next. The book is a huge success, taken to be an outstanding instance of what it was supposed to be mocking. Monk receives a ...”

“... and Politics at the National Industrial Relations Court 1970-75 (Hart, £90) tells the story of John Donaldson, whose career might seem to provide an example of right-wing legal activism in the UK. As a young barrister in 1958, Donaldson co-wrote a policy paper produced by the Inns of Court Conservative and Unionist Society and given the title ‘A ...”

“... dress, the imposing Bowery had got himself up as Divine – his most obvious precursor – in John Waters’s film Female Trouble (1974). Looking conspicuously larger than usual, Bowery fell to the floor moaning and through his tights ‘birthed’ his naked friend (and future wife) Nicola Bateman. The umbilical cord was a string of sausages. The pair ...”

“... about his hero: these include Claire Bloom, Alexander Cohen, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, Sir John Gielgud, Hugh Griffiths, Joseph Losey, James Mason, Vincente Minnelli, Mike Nichols, Rachel Roberts, Daphne Rye, Jean Simmons, and three of his wives, Sybil Christopher, Elizabeth Taylor and Susan Hunt. I particularly enjoyed the parenthesis Mr Ferris ...”

“... Christ! you’re a fallow fellow of All Souls, some ruling twit with stacks of power like heavy St John Stevas.’ ‘Aye, that’s the cracked truth: these platinum technicians, they shred the Holy Word and chew cement – it’s Chairs they’re after, for doesn’t argument reduce to how you keep power (if you’ve got it), or how you take it if you ...”

“... the World Service, but for their practical management and for their vast and complex finances. Sir John Reith – whose image as the independent if quirky guardian of public service broadcasting still lingers in the consciousness of the country as an admirable inheritance – had one radio channel. Sir Hugh Greene, in his slightly clownish way, managed to ...”

“... boomed aloud for all to hear: ‘Oh, do get a move on, you silly old pongers!’ Or the one about John Barrymore as Richard III, after a heavy pub-crawl with his co-star Wilfred Lawson, making such a hash of his opening soliloquy that a member of the audience called out. ‘You’re drunk!’– on which Barrymore approached the footlights and ...”

“... our past. Rather than Burns, a better poet to set against Barnes is his English near-contemporary John Clare. No one, thank goodness, sells Clare to us as ‘Northamptonshire dialect-poet’; yet to their Clare: Selected Poems and Prose (1966), Eric Robinson and Geoffrey Summerfield appended a glossary of more than two hundred words and expressions. If ...”

“... John Charles Robinson​ , perhaps the greatest connoisseur Britain has ever known, was turned down on four occasions for the post of director of the National Gallery. He was thought to be too closely associated with the trade (‘little better than a dealer’), and was known to have operated with scant respect for officialdom when employed by the South Kensington museum ...”

“... of the Sedley and Osborne families there, and later made it the scene of the sale that followed John Sedley’s bankruptcy, the sale at which Becky Sharp was outbid by Captain Dobbin for Amelia’s little square piano. (Building began in 1800, so Becky Sharp saw the square when it was quite new.) It would be, at best, a cosmetic exercise. There are too many ...”