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“... Philip Larkin met Monica Jones in 1946 at Leicester University College. She was an assistant lecturer there, and Larkin was an assistant librarian. Both had firsts in English from Oxford. Monica Jones was an able lecturer, but she never published anything and so was never promoted, although she stayed at Leicester until she retired in 1981 ...”

“... private for his wife, ‘making his almost total blindness into a kind of gift for her, a perfect glass he had blown and polished’. Then his grandchildren, aided by his son, persuade him to perform in public for one more time, at the Fourth of July fair: in a gruesomely embarrassing scene, his tricks fail disastrously; he is too blind to notice, but the ...”

“... of 1914. Nicknamed the ‘Sainte Chapelle of reinforced concrete’, it is filled with stained glass by Maurice Denis and Marguerite Huré.So far, so progressive. But Perret was also an unabashed upholder of French classical architecture. In temperament he was a dapper, worldly and dignified figure, fond of apophthegms – the architectural counterpart ...”

“... flowers, and mounds of peaches, figs, nectarines and strawberries ripening in ‘steamy tents of glass’. Champagne bottles stood stacked on sideboards. Electric fans were positioned on huge blocks of ice, hidden by banks of hydrangeas. It’s hard to believe, but people were taking it in turns to recite Swinburne. ...”

“... bedroom           By the light of the ev’ning star That shone through the plate glass window           From over Leamington Spa. The unexpectedness of plate glass in this context goes with the archaising laboriousness of the dropped trisyllable in ‘evening’. But neither is emphasised in a ...”

“... iris-opening from black is repeated several times, on canvas, palette, paint tubes, smudged brandy-glass; and on the soundtrack come the ecstatic strains of Procul Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. Scorsese’s hero, the successful but shabby and shambling New York painter Lionel Dobie, paints with ferocious energy, channels the music of the Sixties ...”

“... important pieces on the Monopoly board? Even his London Bridge Tower – if built, this 306-metre glass spire will be the tallest office building in Europe – looks like a World Trade Center scheme which, fed up with the debacle in Lower Manhattan, relocated from the Hudson to the Thames. Clearly, Renzo Piano Building Workshop delivers a design profile that ...”

“... Cardinal Richelieu’s sister did not dare sit down, because she believed she was made of glass. Facts such as this cry out for psychological explanation, and an attempt to provide it has been made by Elizabeth Wirth Marvick, in The Young Richelieu. The attempt is bravely made, and it rests on solid archival research in the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Archives, the British Library and other places ...”

“... in Europe’. There’s no view to speak of, and the station is a big shed with lots of glass and cheap detailing: blue pillars and PVC fascias. The city’s relationship to the railway, like its relationship to the world, is arrogant but insecure, high-minded but petty. Oxford was offered a branch line in 1837, with a station to be situated near ...”

“... began, Natures aetherial, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from Infinite to thee ... Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroy’d; From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike, Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. Nisbet’s entry has the gravity and historical depth we expect ...”

“... dispense with the curatorial staff and send the collection of historic tapestries, drawings and glass on a tour of local schools. That year the council’s then leader described Morris as ‘a white imperialist’ of no relevance to Walthamstow. The spectacular row which ensued generated online petitions, national press coverage and representations from the ...”

“... Braudel is different. His thesis, on The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, was certainly long enough and ambitious enough – the first edition of the book ran to some six hundred thousand words, and it has since been considerably enlarged. As a result of the war, most of which he spent in a German prisoner-of-war camp near ...”

“... Even so, as Flanders laments, nothing came of the wood engraving. Once the first baby arrived, Philip, destined to be another disappointing son, Georgie was exiled from the artistic life. Outside the studio she heard ‘through its closed doors the well-known voices of friends . . . while I sat with my little son on my knee and dropped selfish ...”

“... Claudia Roth Pierpont met Philip Roth at a birthday party in 2002. She was a fan, but managed not to alienate him with clumsy enthusiasm. A couple of years later he sent her a photocopy of a newspaper article he thought she might be interested in. They met for coffee and became more relaxed with each other. Later he recruited her as a member of the small rotating committee of friends, an editorial micro-minyan, to whom he sent drafts of his books ...”

“... keep the conversation light and flatter the host. Xenophon introduces us to one such character, Philip, in his Symposium, a work of historical fiction written in c.365 BC. Philip stands on the threshold and announces that he is a laughter-maker (gelotopoios) and jokes that he came uninvited because he thought it was more ...”