“... scene or moment; he had a deep knowledge of what that was like. In his two Wapshot novels, using broad strokes, he managed merely a comic family down on their luck. The problem was partly his intense inhabiting of the domestic sphere and the suburban landscape, as though this were a way of shutting out the wider world, and partly his refusal even to ...”

“... him with open arms as a plucky fellow and then freeze him out. As America was drawn into the war, William Faulkner began work at Warner Brothers on a script about the general (‘The De Gaulle Story’, later ‘Free France’), full of dash and heroism. Apparently, Jack Warner was encouraged by Roosevelt to embark on the project and Faulkner was keen – he ...”

“... o’er books on stalls with half an eye, And fly-leaf ballads on the vendor’s string, And broad-edge bold-print posters by the wall. He took such cognisance of men and things, If any beat a horse, you felt he saw; If any cursed a woman, he took note.That manages to be heroic and quotidian at the same time, describing at once a vocation in life and a ...”

“... neoclassical synthesis, shaped since the 1940s by Paul Samuelson above all. Working from a broad acceptance of Keynesian prescriptions for macroeconomic policy, the younger economists at MIT specialised in clever models that demonstrated the often dramatic implications of market imperfections such as the limited availability of information, or the ...”

“... America and old experienced Europe. In 1919 Russell traced the pragmatism that Dewey shared with William James to ‘that instinctive belief in the omnipotence of Man and the creative power of his beliefs which is perhaps natural in a young, growing and prosperous country, where men’s problems have been simpler than in Europe and usually soluble by energy ...”

“... briefly on 18 June, but not seconded; several of his powerful friends, including Marvell and Sir William Davenant, whom Milton had saved from execution as a Royalist conspirator under the Commonwealth, helped to rescue him. The recollection of images from Macbeth might also contain a trace of subconscious regicide guilt. Milton may have had the regicide ...”

“... 3 per cent actually cast their ballot for Goldsmith’s motley array of candidates on polling day. William Hague tried to make the general election of 2001 a referendum on whether Britain should join the euro (‘24 Hours to Save the Pound’) but no one cared. In 2015 Cameron, hoping to spike Ukip’s guns, included a pledge in the Tory Party manifesto to ...”

“... and brilliantly starched white shirt with narrow black stripes. A brown, green and gold tie in broad stripes, of stiff and hard imitation watered silk. The particulars neither solicit nor receive celebration, and the end is a return: ‘The crease is still sharp in the trousers.’ The clothes are ready for wearing on Sunday, and this is what they will ...”

“... of illegal entries fell sharply around El Paso in the east and San Diego in the west, leaving a broad migrant channel in the intervening stretch of borderland. Many Latin Americans were ready to try it, especially after Mexico devalued the peso in 1994. At that stage crossing the wilderness wasn’t the only option for a clandestine migrant, but matters ...”

“... and, separately, from the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, whose boss, General William Westmoreland, had the Shakespearean sounding title of COMUSMACV. (In the flesh, Westy came over more as a hard-driving business executive.) On one busy day in the flourishing Saigon black market I bought an American fatigue uniform, boots, jungle hat and ...”

“... from Medieval times. Wood End, Moat farm, East End farm, Boxhedge House, Eyreswood farm, Broad Green farm, Perry Hill farm – all had moats, and some of these remained up to a few years ago. The Parish Survey records in 1722 the ‘Messuage in Cranfield built by Dr William Aspin, with the moat round it and groves ...”

“... Museum says. The couple were illustrious knights of the royal chamber of Richard II, Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, ‘the Castor and Pollux of the Lollard movement’, as the medieval historian Bruce McFarlane called them. Neville died just four days after Clanvowe, the inscription records, in October 1391. The Westminster Chronicle ...”

“... some seventy feet at the Great Falls of Paterson. There’s a nice picture of it on the cover of William Carlos Williams’s book-length poem Paterson. The river makes its way through traprock and sandstone to the level plain of the city, continues north to Hawthorne, then doubles back on itself and begins its southerly flow to Newark Bay, about twenty-five ...”

“... another way was the British Art Show 1990. This five-yearly exhibition was, by convention, a broad and pluralistic survey of current British art. The 1985 version had included a bit of everything, all ages and genres, and had duly acknowledged a revival of figuration. In 1990 it was very different. The selection was not ‘representative’. No artist ...”

“... entries, since these were laid down by the editorial team and represented an attempt to secure broad parity of treatment for individuals of broadly comparable ‘importance’. It is mildly paradoxical that a figure about whose life we know very little emerges by this measure as the undisputed Top British Person: ...”