“... then in agricultural California: his teenage years were marked by a car crash that killed a close friend (‘andy buried under a hunter’s moon … I had meant to be first among us dead’). His apprenticeship included the usual poetry workshops (at Sonoma State University, and then at the University of Iowa) but also days ...”

“... posthumously in 2017, the gallerist and curator Walter Hopps mentions his first meeting with Andy Warhol, in New York in 1961, when Warhol was a successful commercial artist looking for a way out. ‘We agreed to keep in touch and see what came along. And what came along … were the 32 original Campbell’s Soup Cans.’ Hopps and Irving Blum gave ...”

“... A Choral Poem, at a feminist theatre, and it lives up to his worst fears. ‘Everyone had a friend or relative to congratulate. The critic struggled against the tide; his eyes met mine for a second – we were practically the only men there – and from the face he made I could already hear the review.’ His yachting trip with an aging Texan ...”

“... conversation, but he also understands that you have to do it gradually, bring people with you,’ Andy Wigmore, the former director of communications at Leave.EU, told me. Wigmore, one of the original ‘bad boys of Brexit’ with Farage and Arron Banks, is now based in Washington, where he works for the Republican lobbyist Gerry Gunster. He says Farage is ...”

“... of Needs, somewhere between Reproduction and Personal Security.‘You’re not the only one,’ a friend assured me, and sent me screenshots of other people who couldn’t change their dresses or remove their ties until the official call came. At best, my superstitions were an attempt to stave off uncontrollable physical terror; at worst, I felt like I was ...”

“... in 1965 Nam June Paik was the first artist to start using this newly consumer-priced set-up. Andy Warhol’s videos of the same year (including a dazed portrait of Edie Sedgwick) were made with a large borrowed Philips camera, but he too began using the smaller and simpler Sony in 1970. William Eggleston bought two, stuck fancier lenses on them, and ...”

“... Novak on her bedroom wall, plot her escape. Self-invention thrives in small spaces. Darling’s friend Jeremiah Newton recalled that ‘her pink bedroom held stacks and stacks of old magazines from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.’ It was so cluttered that when she later returned to visit she had to sleep in another room. Carr describes a favourite childhood ...”

“... Clémenti, his long dark locks now replaced by a sweep of thin blond hair that makes him look like Andy Warhol. Marcello, frantic with surprise and outrage at the chauffeur’s continuing existence, accuses him of having assassinated the professor in France in 1938. He also calls the man a Fascist, and makes the same charge, with more justification, against an ...”

“... a determining effect on what it meant to be ‘left’ or ‘right’ in the ensuing two decades. Andy Beckett was born a few months before the moment I have just described, and I am stirred and astonished at his brilliance, and by the imaginative sympathy with which he rekindles the arguments and emotions of a period he never knew.For many people including ...”

“... Andy Martin is unlikely to convince many readers that Napoleon conquered Europe only as compensation for his inability to write a sentimental novel. His attention to the Emperor’s literary ambitions is, however, not unreasonable. Napoleon dreamed of literary as well as military glory, wrote copiously at various moments in his life, and had real talent for it (Sainte-Beuve called him ‘a great critic in his spare time’, while Thiers elevated him to ‘greatest writer of the century ...”

“... On the boat home Margaret met a rich middle-aged entrepreneur, James Patrick Anderson, known as Andy, who effectively became Michael’s father, paying for holidays abroad and a private education at Clifton College in Bristol, though according to Spoto they remained ‘strangers’ to each other. Before he went to boarding school at 13, Michael mooted the ...”

“... lightly on the earth. I took everything to extremes in my old life.’ Alf is 33 years old. His friend Martin, a fellow Freegan, popped his head through from the back of the van and pushed his glasses up his nose. Martin is 36 and comes from Sydney. He said he was disillusioned as a teenager by the way everyone was obsessed with money and ...”

“... they had recently gone to a party in the studio of a woman painter named Alice Neel, who is an old friend of mine … Alice showed them a portrait of me she did some years ago. I asked them what they thought of it. The young painter’s wife spoke first. ‘It’s one of the most shocking pictures I’ve ever seen,’ she said. And he agreed with her. ‘You ...”

“... the island’s export, curling stones; a rim of red sandstone from the Dumfriesshire quarry where Andy Goldsworthy got the stone for his Arch project; two muscular and horny stumps of yew from a limestone crag a mile from where I live; shingle from the beach on South Uist below the ruined home of the island’s finest poet, Catherine Macaulay, who was cleared ...”

“... hints of mustiness – a sign that more might be stashed under a customer’s bed. I spoke to a friend in Yorkshire, who said they too get these knockers. Does he buy their stuff? Sure, he replied, with charitable ease: they’re just young lads trying to get by, and if there is a scam the proper money isn’t going into their pockets. His partner also buys ...”