“... department’, he had ‘colleagues’, referred to only by their last names (‘Barker and Bowler’), which sounded like something from Tintin, and he also had ‘students’. But what he did at the department seemed a kind of secretive nothing, idle espionage, because he didn’t talk about it, and because at home he acted as if his time was not at ...”

“... who could, nevertheless, sing like angels. What of them? I never met or saw Britten, though he and Peter Pears came disastrously to Beyond the Fringe sometime in 1961. Included in the programme was a parody of Britten written by Dudley Moore, in which he sang and accompanied himself in ‘Little Miss Muffet’ done in a Pears and Britten-like way. I’m not ...”

“... 1920s, in which two fairies were seen coming out from under a bush carrying a coffin and wearing bowler hats. There are reports of fairies descending on human markets in order to steal things (most often butter), and holding their own markets, too, the best known of which, at Pitminster in Somerset, was first documented in the 17th century. Christina ...”

“... it among the music played by the band as the ranks of veterans proceeded up Whitehall wearing bowler hats and medals. And he persuaded a major record company to release a performance of it by the band of a Guards regiment. It was a habit of his to quote out of nowhere and out of context the lines from Henry V, ‘In peace there’s nothing so becomes a ...”