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“... that you have something to hide. This implication is clear in such writings as Robert Graves and Alan Hodge’s The Reader over Your Shoulder, Herbert Read’s English Prose Style, and Orwell’s several essays on language and its consequences. Crick names four of these essays: ‘The Prevention of Literature’, ‘Writers and Leviathan’, ‘Politics ...”

“... strangeness’ of the art of the storyteller. Nowhere is this more clear than in the work of Alan Garner, whose imagination is haunted by goblins. He knows that the strangest thing of all is that, to see them, there is no need to make an expedition to Narnia or the Berkshire Downs. You can watch for them out of the corner of your eye, even in ...”

“... still pursue their traditional goal of seeking out the skeletons in the cupboard. Rhodri Williams shows how British prejudice against their French allies led to the folly of the Battle of Loos in September 1915. David French, on the other hand, explains how the responsibility for another great disaster, the third Battle of Ypres, was subsequently ...”

“... are with men, the puffed-up sort – Bragg, Jimmy Savile, Jeffrey Archer and, more recently, Sir Alan Sugar. She likes artists, especially the erstwhile Young British Artists, and above all, Tracey Emin, who knows how to lay on a juicy spread: the offerings for their first encounter in 2001 included a used condom left on a sofa, Tracey’s 80-year-old dad in ...”

“... getting more exasperated with each other as the decades went by. Later in his book he uses Bernard Williams as a contemporary foil for Dewey, and this is an excellent choice. Dewey enjoyed debunking what he called ‘the alleged discipline of epistemology’ and ‘the epistemology industry’: he was convinced that the whole tradition of ...”

“... Stalinist as no one wants to be the first to stop clapping. Coming out I find myself behind Simon Williams, who has been mentioned by his son as one of Ben’s closest friends and am cheered by the possibility that if Ben could play Ambrose, so could Simon – which happily he does. But ‘lovely Ben’ the overwhelming feeling.24 February. Watching Dad’s ...”

“... from David Hare’s The Power of Yes begin to drift out after their matinée. One of them is Simon Williams, a tall distinguished figure, handsome throughout his life just as was his father, whom I remember from a film I saw as a child, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing. Simon is an Etonian and says languidly: ‘Yes. Character acting for me is playing an Old ...”

“... through texture, beats and effects. Back in 1976, punk set itself against disco wholeheartedly. Alan Jones and Jussi Kantonen describe an occasion in July 1979 at the home stadium of the Chicago White Sox baseball team when thousands of disco records were set alight while the crowd chanted ‘Disco sucks, Disco sucks!’ The 1989 edition of the Penguin ...”

“... attempt the outflanking manoeuvre towards Alam Halfa. This evidence, given to him by Major Bill Williams, then G2 (Intelligence) at Army Headquarters, began that unique relationship between the 54-year-old Army Commander and the 29-year-old Intelligence officer – a relationship which went right through the war to the surrender of German forces in Northern ...”

“... she would surely be more open to the ‘new politics’ than the paper would have been under Alan Rusbridger. It hasn’t worked out that way. What started with denial, as the unions and constituency Labour Parties came out for Corbyn and people registered as supporters in their tens of thousands, soon turned to horror, and finally to stunned ...”

“... To be fair to Alan Walker, I should confess that I’m an amateur pianist who loves playing – or trying to play – some of the virtuoso music Liszt both composed and, of course, performed: relatively easy pieces like Waldesrauschen and Un Sospiro, which are concert études, and also the three ‘Petrarch’ Sonnets ...”

“... want the nation’s press camped on your doorstep, is to say that you once had a wank in 1947.’ Alan Bennett’s remark is quoted with obvious feeling by Kenneth Dover in a late-inserted footnote to his autobiography, Marginal Comment. Someone, he explains, had leaked part of the typescript of his book to the Evening Standard, who, on the scent of celebrity ...”

“... 1 January 2020, Yorkshire. A bright cold day and not one to be hanging about on our local station’s single platform, even with its vast view over the fells and the occasional heron. A phone call down the line reveals that the 10.15 to Leeds has been cancelled (‘operational difficulties’), so we go back home for a cup of tea and come down for the 11 ...”

“... Home Office by the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, chaired by the philosopher Bernard Williams, which advances a case for moral pluralism. The Labour-appointed committee found itself addressing a newly elected Conservative administration which dispatched its findings swiftly into the long grass.It is not obvious why Hilliard takes this as an ...”

“... funny: Cary Grant, as the reformed cat burglar, invites the Lloyd’s insurance agent (John Williams) to have lunch at his villa overlooking the Mediterranean. Grant’s housekeeper serves a delicious meal, the first course of which is a tart with ham, herbs and eggs. ‘It’s a local speciality,’ says Grant, looking immensely sophisticated. ‘They ...”