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“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... John Gibson​ was born in 1827 in rural Ireland. He went to sea at the age of twelve – the family were poor – but at 34 settled as a grocer in St Mary’s, the largest of the Scilly Isles. His business grew, and in 1870 he opened a photographic portrait studio attached to the shop. He had taken a course in Plymouth and was now equipped to shoot the people of the isles ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... administration, who flocked to the new apartments. In 1967, the Democratic National Committee took over the sixth floor of the 11-storey office building. Here, on the night of 17 June 1972, five burglars were caught trying to plant a bug. The group comprised an electronics expert, James McCord, and four Cuban-Americans from Miami. It didn’t take the ...”

“... a jump, a whistle and a fart.Roland fits poorly with the image of medieval minstrels that later took hold. In the 18th and 19th centuries early entertainers were depicted either as quasi-religious bards who plucked their harps at court while intoning the histories of their people, or as romantic wanderers who earned their keep with love songs. In their own ...”

“... I imagine, who stayed with the intriguing literary eminence kindly characterised, eventually, in John Sutherland’s biography.* Nevertheless, a suspicion persisted. Sharp little verses – by Thom Gunn and John Coleman – were flighted; and Ian Hamilton capped it all with a brilliant and damaging New Yorker ...”

“... 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 ...”