“... which suggest that the main narrator is wilfully composing his life as fiction. The fiction of Michael’s life is a story of guilt, penance and desire for absolution following the accidental childhood death of his sister, Fleur. The ‘unsolicited gift’ of the title would seem to have something to do with the gifts which have to compensate for what ...”

“... has continued: later members have included ostensible one-nation Tories – Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Ian Gilmour – but also Keith Joseph and Nicholas Ridley. The politics of the Tory left were actually advanced in various factional groupings and dining clubs, such as Nick’s Diner, the Lollards and the Tory Reform Group.The ...”

“... become, like sport, a specialised affair, and Burgess himself is taken seriously along with it. George Walden, chairman of this year’s Booker Prize, quoted Burgess as a contemporary sage, whose dictum on what a good novel should be like was given as a guideline to his judging panel. Such a novel should leave in the mind ‘a sort of philosophical ...”

“... for the golfer’s many miseries. In The Bogey Man, a duffer’s guide to the professional tour, George Plimpton hints at the bottled-up woes that undermine golf’s reputation as a staid game played by colourless men: ‘professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course – whatever emotions are seething within – with the grim yet placid ...”

“... Michael Sandel’s What Money Can’t Buy does for the market what the London Dungeon does for urban history. It’s a compendium of horror stories arising from what one might call the ryanairation of social life, the breakdown of once cash-free practices into severally billable units of account. Capitol Hill lobbying outfits now pay queuing firms to stand in line, sometimes overnight, so that the lobbyists can step in just before a committee session starts; ‘concierge’ medical companies offer queue-jumping treatment to those willing to stump up the fees ...”

“... out the familiar truths of national character. The dictionary had been undertaken by the publisher George Smith as a piece of private enterprise, with no official or institutional backing, and it had been brought to completion in record time by a very small staff. Less fortunate nations, in whom the spirit of liberty and energy of ‘character’ had been ...”

“... government is the CEO of Exxon,’ he said. McNally is an energy consultant, a former adviser to George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, and a member of the National Petroleum Council. Crude Volatility would be a good title for a biography of Trump, but McNally’s book was written before the election and studiously avoids political controversy. The ...”

“... might be. Among such artists were Barry Flanagan, Richard Long, Bruce McLean, Gilbert and George and others. Many of these people disliked each other. While their individual careers developed they found that they could not teach in the same studios. By the early Seventies this wonderful department was at war with itself. Obviously a standard ...”

“... On Carla’s Song, he gave the actor Robert Carlyle a run-down of his character. ‘Your name’s George and you drive a bus. Maybe it would be a good idea if you learned to drive a bus.’ Had Loach stuck with theatre directing – an early pursuit – he would by now be bringing his plays to schools, hospital wards, disused factories. His television ...”

“... and does not want to go away, water is central to visions of the dry land. When the historian Michael Cathcart, then a student, asked a university research committee for a Land Rover to do ‘fieldwork’, he was asked by those who thought the vehicle should be used for more scientific purposes: ‘What are you collecting?’ ‘Adjectives,’ Cathcart ...”

“... does the assigning. The current chief justice is John Roberts, who was nominated in 2005 by George W. Bush. Clarence Thomas, the most senior associate justice, was nominated in 1991 by George H.W. Bush. Stephen Breyer was nominated in 1994 by Bill Clinton, Samuel Alito in 2005 by ...”

“... pen names and spoof attributions figure centrally in the genre’s history, from Scott, to George Eliot, to Kilgore Trout. According to the massive, nine-volume Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature there are, largely speaking, only three reasons for masked authorship, all prudential: ‘Generally the motive is some form of ...”

“... any length is the positive tribute, the admiring portrait. It has long been clear, however, that George Orwell is something of a hero of his, as of most political journalists with claims to be both essayists and tellers of unpopular truths, and now, spurred by the appearance four years ago of Peter Davison’s marvellously thorough complete edition of ...”

“... The appointment of Coulson, made in May 2007 on the recommendation of the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, soon proved its political worth. News International’s tabloids switched their support from Labour to the Conservatives; and senior Conservatives and Scotland Yard officials managed to stonewall tenacious efforts by Watson, his fellow Labour MP ...”

“... the role of Bryan and the director kept saying: ‘More pompous, Morone. Make him more pompous.’ Michael Kazin is a fine historian who specialises in the lost causes of the left. He has written sympathetic books on the Populist movement and the 1960s. In A Godly Hero, his life of Bryan, he now draws an unexpected conclusion: defying capitalists and defending ...”