“... little credibility amongst scholars, and which was authoritatively disposed of in a major essay by Martin Broszat, one of many current historians whom Dawidowicz implicitly belittles.In all these ways the discussion of the literature is selective, impressionistic and extremely unreliable. It encourages little confidence in the author’s judgment. She descends ...”

“... of Access, and most quickly susceptible of Friendship and Acquaintance’. As his fellow physician Bernard Mandeville observed, you could with application ‘drink yourself into Practice’. Another way to make a medical noise had opened up by the late 17th century, and this was conspicuously to challenge common sense through a display of Newtonian ...”

“... of groups stretching from Ian Paisley’s branch of the Unionists through to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and whoever they officially or unofficially represent. Typically, this ‘peaceful solution’ seems to involve shuffling Northern Ireland into a closer relationship with the Irish Republic and trying to get the spectrum of political groups to ...”

“... the inside cover of Moser’s book like a wall of publicity stills), Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, and, later, her partner Annie Leibovitz. Sontag’s post-cancer skunk-stripe hair made her instantly spottable. For those hitting the right places in Manhattan, Sontag sightings were as recurring and oddly reassuring as Warhol sightings, as ...”

“... full murder mode. Historical information and interpretation, based largely on Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton’s Vichy France and the Jews, have also been added. The 2503 photographs themselves: these have been reproduced from identity cards and gravestones, from formal studio portraits and intimate snapshots, from school, camp and playground groups, from ...”

“... short,’ Freud responded. In Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud, Martin Gayford reports that Freud told him that when Andrew Parker-Bowles protested about the way his stomach protruded, Freud ‘thought I’d better emphasise it more’. Freud​ met Caroline Blackwood at a party in 1949 when she was 18. Three years later, he ...”

“... crucial analytic concept after her: the Female Ovation Complex, perhaps. And indeed, why not? As Robert Gottlieb’s concise yet stylish new biography reminds us, the great actress’s sumptuously chequered life would have presented even the most dimwitted Viennese shrink with a veritable orchestra pit of things to quiz her about. Consider, Herr Doktor, some ...”

“... to revise and correct the pages. When he was released, Wilde gave the manuscript to his friend Robert Ross, who had two copies made. He sent one to Lord Alfred Douglas; the other he later lodged in the British Museum. Sections from Ross’s copy were published in 1905 and in 1908. The complete version, based on the original manuscript, wasn’t published ...”

“... the stomach: fortunately for the doctor, not so fortunately perhaps for poor 19-year-old Alexis St Martin, a fistula remained which had to be plugged to keep food in, but which also provided an unexcelled window into what happened to food once it disappeared down the throat. So, in what a standard account calls one of the most romantic episodes in the history ...”

“... literary fiction; Parker excerpts a climactic scene in which the married but homosexual writer Bernard Sands is the excited witness to a young gay man’s arrest for importuning in Leicester Square – a moment almost too complex to be properly grasped in a short extract. There is also Andrew Salkey’s Escape to an Autumn Pavement (1960), a marvellously ...”

“... a coeditor?No, I was the editor. We had a committee consisting of John Fuller, Francis Hope, Martin Dodsworth, Colin Falck, Michael Fried and Gabriel Pearson. We never had meetings or anything like that. There was a lot of correspondence, because John went to Buffalo for a year. So he wrote to me a lot from there. And Michael and Colin had already left ...”

“... his mother, who was overcome by smoke on the landing. He went into the flat of Raymond ‘Moses’ Bernard, a kind, well-known old gentleman who lived on the 23rd floor with his dog, Marley. A great many of those who died ended up on this floor, Jessica included. Gary Maunders had also climbed the stairs to escape the smoke. ‘He used to try and scare us when ...”