“... face right now,’ Obama said, truly, after will.i.am and Sheryl Crow had busked their way through Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’, with Herbie Hancock noodling on piano; and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC had pounded out ‘My Country, ’Tis of Thee’; and Garth Brooks had gurned through ‘American Pie’; and so on and so on. Perhaps the only truly ...”

“... Anderson, Laver, Roy Emerson, John Newcombe and Fred Stolle (plus lesser stars like Don Candy and Bob Howe). I wanted to know more about South African tennis during apartheid, which gave rise to Sturgess, Gordon and Jean (his sister) Forbes, plus the colourful Abe Segal, and fine Davis-Cuppers like ...”

“... from a similar vessel, has a capable-looking face with strong features, a sensible blunt-cut bob (nothing like Nannie’s wild locks) and a closed-front collared shirt up to the neck. She looks ready to stitch up a wound but hardly invites a wandering eye.Given that the overwhelming majority of ship’s carvers and sailors were men, we might expect male ...”

“... hard to leave it looking complicit in any act of relegation. The opening section of Mr James’s fine new book is titled ‘Australia’s Sons’, from the older version of the first line of our national anthem; nowadays we stiffen and creak our way into that tune by way of a new phrase, ‘Australians all’. I have concentrated heavily on that section so ...”

“... guilty of lashing out and appearing discompassionate … That’s what has been shown to me.’Bob Threakall was told he was HIV-positive when he and his wife were trying for a second baby. It was the summer of 1985. His doctors had been aware of his status since January that year. In her evidence to the inquiry, Bob’s ...”

“... Amadeus Quartet. These last examples are more than incidental in their suggestion of trendiness. Bob Dylan gets eight lines; Dylan Thomas four. George Solti, Colin Davis, Janet Baker and Joan Sutherland are all treated with tight-lipped and austere brevity as compared with Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger. Even where relatively lavish space is ...”

“... the Soviets’, a regime of secrecy and clearance is in operation. Leonard’s American handler, Bob Glass, explains that everybody thinks his clearance is the highest there is, everyone thinks he has the final story: ‘You only hear of a higher level at the moment you’re being told about it.’ Glass then delivers his version of the origins of the ...”

“... William James: His Life and Thought (1986); Jane Maher in Biography of Broken Fortunes: Wilky and Bob, Brothers of William, Henry and Alice James (1986); Michael Anesko in ‘Friction with the Market’: Henry James and the Profession of Authorship (1986); Rayburn Moore in Selected Letters of Henry James to Edmund Gosse (1988); and Lyall Powers in Henry James ...”

“... Thanks to the admirable efforts of Sydney J. Freeberg, now Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts at Harvard, Bobby returned there, on a graduate programme. But no good. There was a history of riding fast – on horses at the ranch, or on bikes in the city: Bobby died on 12 January 1965, after bashing into an Eighth Avenue bus on New Year’s ...”

“... reached school-leaving age, he ran away from home to join a troupe of acrobats in Norwich called Bob Pender’s Knockabout Comedians. When his father found him, he made him return to school, where Archie did his ‘unlevel best to flunk at everything’, as Grant later said. He got himself expelled, and returned to ...”

“... that this is stuff that gets the pulse racing. The words flow. Apt phrases from T.S. Eliot; some Bob Dylan; Samuel Johnson; much dazzle and many jokes; Keats-Byron-Tennyson-Dryden-Shakespeare-Beckett-Hill running giddily into each other; but each writer and observation given its space to illuminate and be illuminated into a radiant energy, which ...”

“... he did come so very near it, so very near to being a Somebody! What happened to him was this. One fine morning in late October his lifelong pal Maurice O’Brien died of a stroke, aged 82. Before noon four people in quick sequence – one suspects that they were all Wamps – rang up my old friend Bob Smylie, the editor of ...”

“... with Napoleon. At once, the whole of British literature about the Far East changed. Poor old Bob Southey (he who in his youth had written the revolutionary epic Wat Tyler) was whistled up to deliver the goods. The Curse of Kehama (1810) showed the Hindu princes (especially those who flirted with Napoleon – the worst of them actually looked like ...”

“... Oops: half-empty.’ In ‘Which Is more than I Can Say about Some People’, Abby marries Bob after her dog dies of kidney failure, and the marriage is as successful as that auspicious start would suggest; in ‘Terrific Mother’, Adrienne, who has been responsible for the death of a friend’s toddler in a freak accident, slides into a ...”

“... obeying male voices (‘taking dictation’) were perfect preparation for the girl typist. Exit Bob Cratchit with his goosequill, enter Miss Jones with her 100 wpm. As it happened, my mother didn’t teach me to read, because I was evacuated from London during my early childhood. Later on, she taught me five-finger touch-typing, for which I am every day ...”