“... world’s most polluted cities, and the life they lead there is mean and desolate. Four million took part in the 87,000 protests recorded last year, mainly against illegal land seizures. In the vast showrooms of Armani and Ferrari, a new elite shops hard to prove that, as Deng declared, ‘to get rich is glorious.’ Once you’re there, the other ...”

“... his children should be as unsystematic as possible. The schooling of the two first-born brothers took them in its initial seven years to a dozen different schools in New York and to as many tutors. After that, they were to enjoy the same variety of educational experience during five years’ wandering in England, France, Switzerland and Germany. James revels ...”

“... on the Democrats for congressional support. Elite leadership of the Republican Party collapsed. John McCain chose the shockingly unqualified Sarah Palin as a running mate in the 2008 election because she was hugely popular with the Republican base, who revelled in the outrage she triggered among liberals. Barack Obama’s victory in that election only ...”

“... and Philistines who, unlike the Jews, were never deported. They remained in Palestine (which took its name from the Philistines) and their descendants formed, and still form, the core of the indigenous population. In the seventh century, the Muhammadan Arabs brought with them their government, their language and their religion, and a majority of the ...”

“... hanging about urinals or showing my aged genitals to girls.’ It’s clear that sexual fantasies took literary form too, even before Maurice – though again we will never know what they were like. At the end of 1911 he notes: ‘Like writing erotic short stories, some of which may be good.’ He shows one to Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, who is ...”

“... My Father Died for This, the remarkable book he has produced with his wife, Abigail Calata (they took it in turns to write different sections), he can offer only an imaginary reconstruction of the murders.* He pieces the story together from partial records, from conversations with people who had first-hand knowledge of the security apparatus, and from the ...”

“... Fisher’s book as New English Grammar, which was in fact the title of a work by the enterprising John Kirkby, who almost certainly plagiarised Fisher’s book for his own. It was Kirkby rather than Fisher who was long given the dubious honour of being the first grammarian to claim that indefinite nouns are referred to with the pronoun ‘he’. The true ...”

“... Last autumn, at the award ceremony of the 1994 Turner Prize, Charles Saatchi took the podium at the Tate Gallery. It was a very rare public appearance by Britain’s leading private collector of contemporary art. His words were awaited with interest. Since it opened to the public in 1985, the Saatchi collection in St John’s Wood has become a focus of what’s called the contemporary art debate ...”

“... use. The water either remains altogether or comes out as innocent as it entered.’ Pills he took did not help, he wrote again, they brought ‘a species of abortive diarrhoea. That is I felt the most reiterated & most violent inclination to stool, without being able to effect anything save the passage of a little blood.’ He saw a doctor who ...”

“... London in 1962. The first thing Martha did was show me a photograph of Tony as a baby, which she took out of her Freedom Pass wallet. Martha is eighty; when Tony died she was in her forties. ‘We knew that Tony’s job came with certain risks,’ Andy told me. ‘We’re not naive. Had he been killed in the line of duty, it would have been heartbreaking and ...”

“... initially not linked to London by a high-speed line; without it, the journey to Brussels and Paris took more than half an hour longer. It was only when François Mitterrand embarrassed the British government in his speech at the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994 by observing that at least visitors to the UK would have time to admire the Kent countryside ...”

“... When satire becomes surrealistic it drops off the map of genre. Unlike other Amis characters (John Self, Keith Talent, Clint Smoker), the arch-lout Asbo doesn’t carry around a name whose oddity and associations he is forbidden by the rules of the novel that contains him from recognising. He changed his name on his 18th birthday to harmonise with the ...”

“... arising from the sea. The cheeks became more hollow, the eyes more prominent, and the mouth took on the permanent curve of lips that are determined not to cry. Towards the end of her life, she looked like a hungry insect magnified a million times – a praying mantis that had forgotten how to pray. Even her springy posture started to resemble the stance ...”

“... briefly (as he did in recording, for Larkin’s delight, his response to an unimpressive poem by John Wain): ‘Could of told you that, shitface.’ Amis was not born into the literary purple, as many of the Bloomsburyish or Bloomsbury-affiliated writers of the previous generation had been, and this humbler background was thought to be somehow explanatory of ...”

“... art communard emptying pockets and bags to find enough coins for a pint in the Palm Tree took me back to 1969 and the moment when real money, the paper kind that came with a few silver coins in a small brown envelope, disappeared. For ever. I had a casual labouring job, unloading containers and stacking trucks and vans in muddy sheds alongside the ...”