“... with a clear idea of what they want to be like. (This has something in common with the poetry of John Ashbery, who praised White’s first novel, in words that could easily be used to evoke his own work, as the ‘account of an almost terminally sophisticated society’.) The beautiful room is empty has several characters who come to life in the ...”

“... better footage from their news helicopter. A shoot-out takes place in which Clarice’s friend John Brigham (who has, by the way, coached her to three successive interservice combat pistol championships) is killed, as is one of the two BATF agents who are anti-realistically called Burke and Hare. Clarice kills five baddies, including Evelda Drumgo ...”

“... from other disciplines. But a dissection of The Rite of Spring adapting from linguistics, say, John Lyon’s version of the theory of semantic structure, or a semiotic analysis of Grainger’s Handel in the Strand are liable to end up, too, as involved technical explanations communicating less real critical insight than the trenchant views of Taruskin and ...”

“... with self-referentiality. The March of the Long Shadows is set in Sicily in 1947. The narrator, John Philips, is keeping a watchful British eye on the nascent movement for Sicilian separatism. Things begin badly, with a note which tells us that ‘all the languages and major dialects of Europe but one share the saying, “where there’s life there’s ...”

“... A learned, indeed an erudite little book; but also one that is so absorbing, so readable, so quietly and deftly humorous, that it shows up all the dull pretentiousness of nine-tenths of the stuff that gets written nowadays about Eng. Lit. A fascinating and major paradox is involved; but what would be the point of the author displaying it when a fabulous gathering of fictional puzzles will do it for him? The best critic, like the best novelist, leaves the reader to decide ...”

“... by toe-curling choruses of ‘Happy Birthday’), hand-holding, embracing, chants (‘Hi, John!’). This is evidently necessary to create a structure for the incoming drunk in free fall or those whose sobriety is fragile. The structure is always there and always the same; a reassuringly solid thing in a dangerously liquid world. What is rarely boring ...”

“... all there were to go on were the few personal remarks about his ‘charm’ and ‘modesty’ that John Chadwick felt able to include in The Decipherment of Linear B (a book first published in 1958 and reprinted many times since). Chadwick was a Cambridge philologist, a specialist in the history of ancient Greek, who collaborated with Ventris on the closing ...”

“... in his career were household names: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Marco Pierre White and Elton John, Robert Maxwell and Richard Branson. There were also memorable victories against Jonathan Aitken on behalf of the Guardian and Neil Hamilton on behalf of Mohammad Al-Fayed. Aitken sued over various allegations, ranging from a claim that he was financially ...”

“... myself rooting privately for Germany, though as I was sitting next to one of JM’s bodyguards [John Major was still prime minister], even though he was a Scot, I pretended to be backing England. It was one of the most incredible matches I’ve ever seen and to be fair to England, they could and should have won and there was a part of me willing them ...”

“... of the impetus to this comes from. Amis mentions a very powerful negative review of his father by John Updike, published in 1978 when Jake’s Thing came out, and collected in Hugging the Shore in 1983. It’s a much less patronising, and more overtly hostile, review than usual for Updike, and it begins:If the postwar English novel figures on the ...”

“... From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity. Edvard Munch I Landfill In ways the dead are laid                           or how they come to lie I recognise myself                   insomniac                            arms angled       or crossed: children in skull caps soldiers with hobnailed boots or sandals placed like gifts beside their feet priests at the gates of death                               or afterlife their vestments stained with malt and carbon            fingers rinsed with camomile                or honeyed meadowsweet resemble me            laid sleepless by your side as if there were something else                                 some chore or rite to be completed ...”

“... Which​ was the best goal? Lauren Hemp’s high-precision cross, headed home by Beth Mead? Mead’s left-footed shot angled past a diving keeper after a jinking run past three defenders? Or Georgia Stanway’s penalty straight into the corner of the net? England’s 8-0 victory over Norway in their second group game of the Euros had moments of individual brilliance but more striking still was the team’s sheer unstoppability ...”

“... Back when I was at university, the only people who ever used the word ‘narrative’ were literature students with an interest in critical theory. Everyone else made do with ‘story’ and ‘plot’. Since then, the n-word has been on a long journey towards the spotlight – especially the political spotlight. Everybody in politics now seems to talk about narratives all the time; even political spin-doctors describe their job as being ‘to craft narratives ...”

“... When Ferran Adrià, the Spanish maestro who is undisputedly the most influential chef of the last two decades, gave up cooking at his restaurant El Bulli, he announced that he was going to be starting a number of projects. One of them is intended to be a foundation dedicated to the study of himself. Another was a collaboration on the subject of food and science with Harvard ...”

“... What on earth, you ask, is a scarith? Well, it is a sort of mud-piecrust package, which may be tubular in shape, containing in various layers documents of immense antiquity. What language is the word from? Apparently from ancient Etruscan, or Hetruscan, if stories about the grandeur of the Tuscan kingdom up to the time of Lars Porsena of Clusium are to be believed ...”