“... of Greek and Roman art. Ned’s chief assistant in this enterprise was the great love of his life, John Marshall. The two met at Oxford, where Marshall was an outstanding student. Many of his contemporaries believed that the young man might become a great Classical scholar, but he chose to serve as Ned’s secretary. He received a regular salary, but he was ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... by Nadar or Julia Margaret Cameron. Some of them were famous – William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, John Giorno – or soon to be: Hujar recorded successive generations of downtown scenesters, including Gary Indiana, Fran Lebowitz and Cookie Mueller. Even if he had been only a portraitist, Hujar’s work would be an essential document of queer life and ...”

“... down-market but already very funny Edna Everage. There was an evening when Barry and Rosalind took my wife and me to a sort of teen-club under the street where there was a band and dancing. We were all aged about thirty and felt out of place; my inclination was to be inconspicuous, but with Barry Humphries for company it was impossible. The Beatles ...”

“... he set out. What seemed false had become true.Qā’sElid had inadvertently become what Malcolm John Rebennack Jr, in his first work as Dr John, billed as the ‘last of the best’:They call me the gris-gris manGot many clients, come from miles around,Running down my prescriptionI got medicine to cure all y’alls ills,I ...”

“... the real-life Rochester, Alexander Larman provides a workmanlike account of an improvident life. John Wilmot was born in 1647 on All Fools’ Day. His father, one of Charles II’s most stalwart lieutenants, had fought for the king and fled the field with him after the royalist defeat at the battle of Worcester. The two men escaped together to Paris, where ...”

“... little child’. Conrad not only borrowed without shame but when he was in particularly low water, took refuge on the distant estate of his relative, where he was clucked over and cosseted. Uncle Tadeusz, who took enormous pride in his nephew’s achievement in the English merchant marine, died before Conrad made his name as ...”

“... suit, and frequently a white cotton sailor’s shirt with a V-shaped neck and a dark sash. He took childlike delight in donning the shirt and going to the beach to “awaken” the seashells by calling out to them.’ He was obviously someone to be taken only in tiny doses. It is also clear that this poet and playwright, talented pianist, cartoonist and ...”

“... his bookplates show him winking). And when, in the Fifties, his plays no longer found favour, he took frivolity’s message to the public in person as a cabaret turn, brilliantly mocking his audiences’ appetite for anxiety with such mischievous songs as ‘Why must the show go on?’ and ‘There are bad times just around the corner’: With a scowl and a ...”

“... Broadcasting began as entertainment and only later took education and information into its scope. But by 1925 the General Strike brought the BBC up against the Government, or rather against Winston Churchill, since Baldwin did not support him in his attempt to take over the Company (which is what it then was) as an extension of the British Gazette, the sole medium of communication between the Government and the people ...”

“... because Lord Cherwell ‘had no executive power’ as Churchill’s war-time adviser ‘no one took much notice of him,’ or that the climatic effect of excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might be avoided because the ‘new coal-building [sic] technology was much cleaner.’ Obvious mistakes of this sort seem rare, but other reviewers might find ...”

“... to zoom lenses, they could also see arson, battery and murder in close-up. One particular episode took on iconic significance. At a crossroads in South Los Angeles, four young blacks dragged a white driver from his truck. They beat and stomped him mercilessly, and stole his wallet, while a flock of helicopters relayed the scene as it happened to early evening ...”

“... by the publisher), bestseller buzz, casual purchase and, above all, discounted prices. The chains took full advantage of new technology: not for them slips of paper. B. Dalton was fully computerised by 1966 – the first major bookseller in the country to be so. Electronics had not merely revolutionised retail selling but had also rationalised wholesale ...”

“... the 1870 Education Act and the arrival of magnates like Newnes, Pearson and Harmsworth progress took an opposite turn. ‘Reading for the Millions’ became big business. The proprietors got to know their public very well, and the market was profitably carved into a patchwork of target areas with competition driving standards down rather than up. It was ...”

“... the early part, in the narrator’s consciousness, can be delicious: as good as Virginia Woolf, or John Betjeman, who would have adored subtle pentameters like ‘The irregular line of elms by the deep lane’. And like Sonnets from the Portuguese, which Robert Browning had advised Elizabeth to present as translations, and which were not published as her own ...”