“... tessitura, in prose and verse. Once while living in Kennington he met two Oxford undergraduates, Jack Clark and Rodney Philips, who were interested in poetry: they ‘were in some disbelief that close to the Clark family house could actually reside a contributor to New Writing, as, in a way that now seems baffling, had been reported to them’. That ...”

“... public identities, niche as they were’. Her boyfriend at the time, the songwriter and producer Jack Antonoff, was always on tour, and seemingly unable to admit to himself that he didn’t want to take care of a mysteriously and constantly sick girlfriend. HBO grew tired of her hospital stays too: when they asked for a second opinion on her condition, their ...”

“... from within it – and with a sense of humour entirely lacking in historical novelists.’ In London, Richard Ollard, an editor at Macmillan, was similarly impressed by O’Brian’s ‘originality, gusto and … really astonishing knowledge of the sources’. He was ‘a more than competent hand at characterisation’, Ollard, a former navy ...”

“... studying networks. How did everything connect? Surely it did in some way? Certain areas of London, certain prep schools, London shops (Harrods, for some reason, was considered a bit ‘common’, while Harvey Nichols was not), certain sports, clothes, even brands of aftershave: they all signified. There were ...”

“... his best, has been borrowed only four times since 1977 by the discriminating members of the London Library. Out of his 23 novels and books of stories, Penguin now offers only seven. That Nobel is over thirty Nobels old. By contrast, his Transatlantic fame as one of the world’s greatest novelists must be as secure as ever, especially within and ...”

“... Savoy Palace was burned to the ground and the lord chancellor’s head was placed on a spike over London Bridge. Yet it was a bit of royal flash that put an end to the revolt. Richard was able to palm off the rebels with vague promises of pardons and reform, before confronting Wat Tyler during negotiations at Smithfield. The Lord Mayor of ...”

“... as an Englishman by adoption. Their only effect has been further to alienate Brown and Labour in London from their Scottish supporters, thereby boosting the SNP’s chances in the forthcoming elections and, thus, compounding Brown’s predicament as a North Briton in English politics. This is a sad prospect. If Brown’s Scottishness is used by disgruntled ...”

“... and gush in print on behalf of TPOF (The Poor Old Führer), was already marshalling the Union Jack Shirts for her novel Wigs on the Green. But it was not until 1938 that P.G. Wodehouse brought on Sir Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts in The Code of the Woosters: ‘By the way, when you say “shorts”, you mean “shirts”, of course.’ ‘No. By ...”

“... more exalted circumstances; next week for instance she is accompanying the Italian president to London to meet Jack Straw and she also translated for Bush on his visit to Italy last year. The library at the British Council is busy and full of students who only leave when it closes at 8 p.m., and seeing these young ...”

“... character in the Henry VI plays (1590-92) is not an honourable warrior but the populist rebel Jack Cade, who has Lord Saye beheaded because ‘he can speak French, and therefore he is a traitor.’ The xenophobic rhetoric favoured by Cade is assigned to another repulsive character in the last of this sequence of histories, Richard III (1593), when before ...”

“... at Chequers which brought together Wilson, his First (and Employment) Secretary Barbara Castle, Jack Jones of the Transport Workers, Hugh Scanlon of the Engineers and Vic Feather, the recently elected TUC General Secretary. The hours of argument circled round the Government’s need – political as much as economic – for legally enforceable constraints ...”

“... Chantry, John Constable, Thomas Lawrence, James Northcote and John Soane; and from the theatre, Jack Bannister, George Colman the younger, various Kembles, the long-deified Mrs Siddons and very many more. There were peers of the realm, baronets, famous churchmen, a duchess. One hundred or so of these subscribers had been the subjects or recipients of ...”

“... how he thought he’d never leave it, and then telling me stories of his life now, as a beggar in London. He tapped my arm: ‘Times’s bad,’ he said, ‘but good times is just around the corner.’George talked a lot about time; mainly he spoke of how it went too slow. He was 70, sleeping most nights at the Bondway emergency night-shelter in ...”

“... quite at the front, he passed the time in training, in hospital with bronchitis, or hanging around London using his lieutenant’s uniform to pick up women. Others might write of the horrors of trench warfare but Wheatley was inspired to write a romantic novel, Julie’s Lovers, which was rejected by Cassell. More important so far as his literary development ...”

“... and a belief, along with Williams, that American modernism should be relocated from Paris and London to the US. Asked to edit an issue of Poetry in 1931, Zukofsky put them together, along with Williams, Carl Rakosi, Basil Bunting, Kenneth Rexroth and a stylistically random collection of others (including the young Whittaker Chambers), under the rubric of ...”