“... the Russell-Coteses had collected, such as James Archer’s Henry Irving as Charles I (1873) and John Collier’s Lewis Waller as Monsieur Beaucaire (1903), were really very fine. I had also begun to feel defensive about genre painting, which seemed to be eminently respectable when executed by 17th-century Dutchmen but was otherwise bafflingly taboo. Was it ...”

“... early history of species ‘bagging’ in North America. Every ornithologist will know the name of John James Audubon, but there were many other impressive pioneers in recording life on the continent. I hadn’t realised the extent to which Thomas Jefferson, for example, engaged in speculation about the affinities of fossilised mammoth bones that had turned up ...”

“... in the work of several of the philosophers Putnam approves of (in particular Stanley Cavell and John McDowell). But the trouble with that strategy is that nothing ontological follows from the fact of entanglement. Apollo was much entangled with the forms of life in ancient Athens; but if there isn’t any Apollo, then there isn’t. It is not a defence of ...”

“... so outraged by her pursuit of pleasure. The absolution and reverence that came to the novelist John McGahern from the penitent monsignors who used to persecute him has yet to be granted to Edna, though I expect it will come. It may not last till the millennium, but for the time being at least, the curse of the Catholic Church no longer carries as far as it ...”

“... Keith Ridgway used to be compared to John McGahern for his dourly lyrical stories of a changing Ireland. (‘Fr Devoy nodded his head and sipped his tea and waited. He watched the sky move and thought he saw rain in the distance but could not be sure.’) That stopped with the publication of his third novel, Animals, in 2006 ...”

“... in the age of infinite technological intrusion? The movie’s writers (Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan) obviously want to side with tradition against the mindless modernisers but their heart’s not in it. Even M herself is aurally present on a wire while Bond is chasing through Istanbul on his bike and leaping onto a train. This is a fine ...”

“... missionaries were major presences there. Burtt frequently stayed with missionaries and men such as John Norton-Griffiths, the contractor of the Benguela railway, who beat his African workers so readily that Burtt claimed he was ‘cordially hated by nearly all his men’, all 1700 of them. Another well-known Englishman in Benguela was famed for having floored ...”

“... a monopoly of printing. In 1588 the anti-episcopal Marprelate Tracts (one of whose authors, John Penry, was executed for publishing them) provoked a system of press licensing which survived in one form or another, though with diminishing effect, until the last decade of the 17th century. The first thing that should be said about the current controversy ...”

“... TV news host Tucker Carlson. In the absence of his third sacked national security adviser, John Bolton, the role of empire-minder has been taken over by Democrats and the anti-Trump media. (Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, accordingly averred that any withdrawal from Syria is as unthinkable as withdrawal from Germany or ...”

“... wear double-breasted suits with lapels as large as Mosley’s. The Notting Hill serial murderer John Christie was put in one of the police cells after his arrest in March 1953, the detective said. Four months later, after he was tried and sentenced, he was executed at Pentonville Prison in Islington. According to the detective, the gallows equipment was ...”

“... myths, and is temperamentally a northern island or isthmus dweller. In that respect he’s like John Burnside, to whom he dedicated his best poem so far, ‘At Roane Head’ (LRB, 14 August 2008), in which there is not just a selkie at the bottom of the garden but there might be a selkie in the bedroom that could cuckold you, or make you kill your children ...”

“... on the side of a bus, and before you know it you’ve promised a spending spree so lavish that John McDonnell is accusing you of being ‘reckless’. But something significant has happened along the way that may cause particular concern to traditional Conservative sympathisers in the business and financial sectors. The claim that politicians are ...”

“... sense:The night we separated, my husband had a party in our house to which the Beatles, John Lennon, Stuart Sutcliffe – the one who died – and I can’t remember who else, came. The party went on for three days and nights; I moved out down the road to a friend’s house with the children, and later we divorced amicably. I never saw the Beatles ...”

“... to create perfect miniatures, to take no major risks.’ On the other hand, you could say, as John Gross has done, that the fault is in the eye of the beholder: ‘While Americans think we’re miniaturists, English people tend to think Americans suffer from gigantism.’ Shields responds to such charges more indignantly in her latest novel, Unless, set a ...”

“... The Berni Inn and the denim loons – ah, yes. The Blue Nun. The chicken-in-a-basket. And John Denver singing ‘Annie’s Song’. Marvellous. But Coe also includes the text of a speech given by one of the characters in later life, looking back on the 1970s, and complaining that ‘people forget about the 1970s. They think it was about wide collars ...”