“... James would read his stories to gatherings of male friends, and the golden undergraduate McBryde drew pictures for the stories. ‘Monty disappeared into his bedroom,’ recalled another friend. ‘We sat and waited in the candlelight ... Monty emerged from the bedroom, manuscript in hand, at last, and blew out all the candles but one, by which he seated ...”

“... Jolting miserably over the rough terrain, he began to wail. This – the thing I describe – drew a crowd. For his plight grew worse, yet his shouts were in a foreign language, desperately begging his ‘master’s mercy’. His funny way of talking made them laugh. His bodily contours, his fat suggested something alien, animal, Babylonian, gross. So the ...”

“... soul in silence.’She wasn’t always silent, and it was the situation with Katharine Loring that drew Henry down to Bournemouth. Katharine’s sister had weak lungs, and Katharine – ‘who appears to unite’, he wrote, ‘the wisdom of the serpent with the gentleness of the dove’ – was trying to look after Louisa and Alice at the same time. Alice was ...”

“... were in, was supposed to follow his family down the stairs. The minicab driver’s disabled wife, Flora, was carried down the entire 23 flights on the back of her son, Farhad, a recent graduate in mechanical engineering who had martial arts training. Both he and his mother survived. Sepideh and her son, Karen Aboud and her sons, Hamid the fish-seller, Mr ...”