“... charismatic, amoral outsider at the centre. The story got him the attention of the publisher John Farrar, who passed it to Edward Weeks at the Atlantic. Matthiessen was taken on as a client by ‘the toughest agent in town’. Bernice Baumgarten also represented John Dos Passos, Edna St Vincent Millay and Raymond ...”

“... inside of the kiosk’. The interior surfaces were of bakelite-faced plywood, and the stainless steel fittings included a pipe or cigarette-rack and a hook for umbrellas. Lavishly furnished or not, however, the phone booth was at once an enclosure and a facility accessible to all and sundry; that is, a health hazard. In August 1906, a ‘call office ...”

“... all the more sweeping because back in England the pattern of land ownership was still very varied. John Darby’s huge estate map of Smallburgh, Norfolk, dated a year before Gilbert set sail and now in the British Library, shows a rich mixture of strip-fields, commons and orchards, as well as the large number of fields already enclosed by the landowner and ...”

“... nuclear scientists. ‘It’s critical for us to know going forward,’ the US secretary of state, John Kerry, said in June, that ‘those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way.’ France has said that any agreement that doesn’t include inspections of military sites would be ‘useless’. Iran has been adamant ...”

“... of Pound’s cage heavy-gauge wire mesh had been replaced by reinforced lengths of the welded steel matting used in the construction of aircraft landing strips. Some wire mesh jutted up from the concrete floor, offering the possibility of suicide. Pound was allowed six blankets and a bucket; he also had a Chinese book and some toilet paper. Psychiatrists ...”

“... and after, all show him heavy, fleshy, placid, composed, correct, in collar and tie and with a steel comb newly driven through his senatorial white crop. (At Harvard in 1900 Stevens parted his hair in the middle and was a ringer for Oscar Wilde.) When Brodsky was sentenced for ‘social parasitism’ in 1964 in the Soviet Union, the judge made some remark ...”

“... or Iggy Pop’s The Idiot? Kraftwerk have a track called ‘Numbers’, but I prefer Soft Cell’s John Rechy-inspired single of the same name, one of the great lost 45s of the 1980s, which involves an entirely other (and far less hygienic) form of accounting. And I haven’t even mentioned that other great pre-techno German dance classic, ‘I Feel Love’ by ...”

“... spring of vital elixir. He was excited by the viaduct suspended over an alpine precipice, by steel come to life, by the divine exactitude of calculation. He understood that impressionable archaeologist who, after having cleared the path to as yet unknown tombs and treasures, knocked on the door before entering, and, once inside, fainted with ...”

“... the titanium industry, pharmaceuticals, fishing, the import-export business, printing, steel, agricultural products and banking. These interests are organised under a plethora of labels (including such typical Moonie appellations as One Up Inc., Uniworld and Happy World Inc.), and Boyer does a heroic job in trying to enumerate them – by 1985 ...”

“... of its offices: ‘At this location, 122 Commerce Street, was a very large warehouse owned by John Murphey, who provided support to the slave traders in the city.’ ‘I would have preferred not to have the additional markers,’ the mayor confessed, ‘but I believe they are part of history.’ He agreed to allow them, he said, because they would ...”

“... House (where I do not pee). It’s the home of the Lascelles family, an ancestor of which, John Lascelles, blew the gaffe on Catherine Howard, the king’s fifth wife, but was later culled himself in the purge of evangelicals during that dreadful monarch’s last years. I watch two of the now well-established red kites tumbling about the sky above the ...”

“... the dreams that attached themselves to him. In choosing ‘a well-rounded life’ as his subtitle, John Campbell risks some obvious jibes about his increasingly portly subject, but he delivers on its promise. It is a persuasive, if at times indulgent, portrait of a life rich in satisfactions. At its heart were a long, close marriage and three children, to ...”

“... There was almost no answering fire.LST 301 was among the first vessels to go ashore, its massive steel doors wide open and its landing ramp fully extended beyond the bow. Major Bill Kerr, commander of 265 Battery and my father’s friend, stood on the lip of the ramp. When he felt the ship’s stern shudder as it scraped the bottom, he stepped forward into ...”

“... producing a range of metal goods, and served by the Soho Foundry in Smethwick, in the coal and steel belt of the Black Country. There was ideology and drama here beyond the grim calculations of Manchester mill-owners. The manufactory was ‘reckoned to be the largest factory in the world’, and was ‘built to impress’, with its Palladian façade. It ...”

“... signified the maturity of Henry’s power, his dynastic grip. The last earl of Lincoln had been John de la Pole, the Yorkist claimant to the throne, killed fighting Henry VII at the battle of Stoke in 1487. His younger brother, Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, was executed in 1513; his brother William was securely shut in the Tower; another ...”