“... would do well to consider the absolute state of 1970s popular entertainment – James Bond, Benny Hill, Jimmy Savile – and what that might indicate about everyday life at the time for teenage girls: the very walls had eyes in them that followed you everywhere, making you feel, as Chris’s father made her feel, ‘sickened and queer’. In Sunset Song, when ...”

“... saw more action than the Mini and she would tootle off in it on a Sunday morning, park on Primrose Hill (‘The air is better’) and even got as far as Hounslow. More often than not, though, she was happy (and I think she was happy then) just to sit in the Reliant and rev the engine. However, since she generally chose to do this first thing on Sunday ...”

“... in many other countries in Europe, Aids was initially considered an overseas ‘media import like Hill Street Blues’, in Garfield’s words. The gay charity Switchboard assured nervous callers that ‘sex is as safe as crossing the road.’ When Terrence Higgins collapsed at work and began inexplicably dying in a London hospital in July 1982, his boyfriend ...”

“... my name without making a patronising show of it, and stayed to tell a good story about Christopher Hill and John Sparrow, and of how he’d been the unwitting agent of a quarrel between them, while ignoring an ambitious and possessive American professor who kept yelling ‘Eye-zay-ah! Eye-zay-ah!’ from across the room. (‘Yes,’ he murmured at the ...”

“... from Marseille to Oran and come overland in the hope of obtaining a visa to Lisbon. Ugarte (Peter Lorre), a forger and procurer of documents, asks Rick to look after two sets of safe-conduct papers until his clients arrive. ‘You despise me, don’t you?’ he says to Rick. ‘You object to the kind of business I do, huh? But think of all those poor ...”

“... with Wright, to seeing the patents and the new blockchain ideas. During our lunch in Notting Hill, Matonis suggested that this technology would change the world. One of the scientists said to me, ‘This isn’t Bitcoin 2.0. This is something magnificent that will change who we are. This is Life 2.0,’ and Matonis agreed. The idea was now to use the ...”