“... the monologues of Sandy Stone, a character so enduring that he has proved unkillable. Like Conan Doyle precipitating Sherlock Holmes over the Reichenbach Falls, Humphries at one stage compelled Sandy to drop off the twig, but he came back from the dead more talkative than ever. Talkative but torpid. You have to have seen the shows, or at least listened to ...”

“... Cemetery beside others who had fought and suffered for the cause of Ireland: Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Paddy Dignam. Although there is a large collection of Casement documents in the National Library in Dublin (and other items which he brought back from Africa and South America – including costumes and a butterfly collection – in the ...”

“... He was at the same time separated from the young men he liked to hang out with, particularly Peter Doyle, to whom he wrote in 1875: ‘I get desperate at staying in – not a human soul for cheer, or sociability or fun, and this continues week after week and month after month.’ Emerson, alas, further increased his feelings of neglect and isolation by ...”

“... heard in the word ‘Norton’ an echo of that job, and even of his family – he was appointed as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry. From childhood onwards, Eliot was fascinated not just by names in general, but by his own. Murder in the Cathedral, the 1935 play which, throughout the period covered by this volume of letters, yields a healthy income ...”

“... of ‘historical London figures’ and ‘modern day heroes’. Ada (Lovelace), who worked with Charles Babbage on his ‘analytical engine’, is paired with Phyllis (Pearsall), the artist who claimed to have tramped three thousand miles in mapping streets for the A-Z. The most recent partnership, Jessica (Ennis) and Ellie (Simmonds), were christened, as ...”

“... by Johnson. James Slack, the Mail’s political editor, became May’s official spokesman; Jack Doyle, an associate editor at the Mail, became Downing Street communications director. Robbie Gibb, who had worked as an editor at the BBC’s Newsnight and on its flagship Andrew Marr political interview show, became Downing Street director of communications in ...”

“... to declare the crisis over in the summer of 1847.’ O Grada has analysed the papers of Charles Trevelyan, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, and suggests that, throughout these years, Trevelyan believed that the ‘Famine had been ordained by God to teach the Irish a lesson, and therefore should not be too much interfered with’. As early as ...”