“... had been great. For reasons I’ll explain in a moment, the new house is named Princess Diane; or The Princess for short. (Likely – I already see – to morph into La Principessa in Mapp and Lucia moods.) A classic double-decker San Francisco ‘Painted Lady’ – meaning a late 19th-century wooden domicile of cheesy touristic charm (and, some ...”

“... the tears, everyone burst into peals of laughter. Classic Rih.When he suffers a detached retina, Diane Von Furstenberg steps in to help him skip the queue and secure an appointment with the most in-demand eye surgeon. His OBE party is organised by Naomi Campbell. ‘Naomi had booked a suite at Claridge’s to throw a lunch for my family. It was a Sunday ...”

“... recognition gave him courage and confidence. The following year, rejected by Yale, he decided on Williams. Once there, he scarcely attended classes, preferring to spend his time in the library. After a year, he moved back to New York, eventually taking a job in the Map Room of the New York Public Library. He begged his father to send him to Paris, and a few ...”

“... And who is being diverted, in any case? Here, after all, is a four-hundred-page book, welcomed by Diane Eyer, the author of Mother-guilt: How Our Culture Blames Mothers for What’s Wrong with Society, with essays from 26 contributors, many of whom have written elsewhere on the subject, and who run classes and clinics to help us with it. Still, there is ...”

“... know-your-place remarks of the sort made by Michael Fallon to Andrea Leadsom, or by David Davis of Diane Abbott. In the 1979 general election, which brought the Conservatives to power under Margaret Thatcher – something Harman describes as an ‘excruciating blow’ – 19 women were elected, the lowest postwar figure aside from the 17 elected in ...”

“... so much ‘meaty pay dirt’ as the stuff of daytime television with odd touches of Tennessee Williams: He looks so sweaty and ugly, which, I mean we all do when we are desperate and looked at with no feeling, I know that. Desire makes us ugly unless the other person is lost to it too … It is like watching a movie. But it is me, I feel this ...”

“... which was run by radical nuns. It was a Time-Life edition with an embroidered cover by Leo and Diane Dillon, a cover so beautiful it stayed on the eye and swam over the yellowing pages. I read it till the spine cracked and never returned it; it is next to me right now. I only stole the books that baffled me, the ones I couldn’t seem to solve. She was ...”

“... parliamentary left. This strategy had worked before: last time round David Miliband nominated Diane Abbott as a candidate. In 2015 they hoped a left candidate would take away support from Andy Burnham, who was what passed for leftish, leaving the door open for Liz Kendall or Yvette Cooper. Enter Jeremy Corbyn stage left. He may not be a charismatic ...”

“... literary brilliance’, Pacino writes, and introduced him to many writers, such as William Carlos Williams. This was the late 1950s, and Pacino says he would often go to an automat with a book and make a single cup of coffee last for hours. Laughton also encouraged him in his Shakespearean ambitions: Pacino’s audition piece was ‘O, what a rogue and ...”