“... business schools have been covering the ground with Malcolm Bradbury, Martin Wiener and Correlli Barnett. Their audit of the nation is complete. Confirming old suspicions about the degeneracy of the sociology department, it has also brought out a newer truth about English culture and its responsibility for the decline of the industrial spirit. Doubtless the ...”

“... turn one of them off. It’s a good service, a model, with none of the speakers – his two sons, Richard Eyre and Robert Bathurst – outstaying their welcome and Ben vividly recalled.Bathurst is particularly good, reading a Betjeman poem about golf, following it up with a very funny (and almost better) poem in parody by Ben himself. Since I know him chiefly ...”

“... out in a group of ambitious black male writers who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s and included Richard Wright (born 1908), Ralph Ellison (1914) and James Baldwin (1924), Himes has never quite entered the pantheon. His peers were condescending: Wright never took him seriously as an artist; Ellison, who saw him as little more than an ex-con with a pen, joked ...”

“... by such as Julian Huxley and Joseph Needham. They had not lasted. The writer just quoted is Richard Hoggart, whose memories of his time in Paris are not fond. The picture he paints of a Unesco General Conference – the kind taking place through the door just to the left of Picasso’s mural – seems relevant. Meetings usually start late. There is no ...”

“... but reached its climax in the cloning contests of reality TV. According to research by Steven Barnett, in 1955 the BBC devoted 10 per cent of its schedule to arts programmes and nearly 25 per cent to children. Over the course of the last decade, the time devoted to soaps has almost doubled (approaching 10 per cent of peak output), current affairs ...”

“... by the Manhattan gallery owner Betty Parsons and moved back to New York. There, alongside Rothko, Barnett Newman and Ellsworth Kelly – fellow Abstract Expressionists seeking a new way forward after the death of Jackson Pollock – Martin won acclaim for her delicate, somewhat cerebral experiments in geometric form. She was touted by the critics and ...”