“... Nikki’s body would be pixellated. Boyd – an inky dragon crawling out from the neckline of his white T-shirt – looked impassively at his screen as the camera tracked Nikki’s last journey through the Old Exchange Building, from the gap in a partially boarded-up window round the back through which she was pushed, to the basement, where her body was ...”

“... the 1960s and after by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest. It also contains a letter from Amis to Christopher Hitchens, which is needling enough (‘Do you admire terror? I know you admire freedom’) in the rhetorical pressure it applies on an old friend to renounce Lenin, Trotsky and all their works, but ends by sending ‘fraternal love, as always’. Amis ...”

“... sprawl scattered like so much confetti over the gnarly green terrain. In the distance, the tall white cluster of buildings that formed downtown Los Angeles poked through a corona of smog. Coming into view below was my destination: the 480-acre subdivision established in 1887 and named ‘Hollywood’ by a real estate speculator’s wife because, she ...”

“... terrorism and Communism. With the compliance (not to say indifference) of the higher-ups in the White House and in the State and Defence Departments, the country’s foreign policy has been handed over to these new warriors, who see nothing wrong with committing the economy and national security to a state of permanent war. Every one of the main actors in ...”

“... of United Biscuits, which gave £632,500 to the Party during the Thatcher years); Sir Gordon White (head of the US arm of Hanson, which gave £652,000 to the Tories and £100,000 to the Centre for Policy Studies in 1981-90); Sir Jeffrey Sterling (head of P & O, which gave £370,000 during the Thatcher years); Peter Palumbo (Chairman of the Arts Council ...”

“... part we were finally installed on seats in front of the pavilion, the soothing sight of green and white displayed before us. Although hardly an enthusiast by temperament, Frank was a cricket-lover, always reading the scores in the sports pages and watching the TV highlights. He had played regularly while a lecturer at Reading in the 1950s (‘I was never any ...”

“... Boulez observed that Messiaen practised juxtaposition rather than composition, he had a point. As Christopher Dingle argues in his contribution to Messiaen in Context, Messiaen was ‘primarily an orchestral composer’, ‘implicitly orchestrating his music even when no orchestra was involved’. The piano and organ were the pillars of his ...”

“... of the war on terror and its advocates (one of his early books was subtitled ‘The Trial of Christopher Hitchens’), then of the economic austerity that followed the 2008 crash. Like Hitchens, Seymour is a former Trotskyite; he left the Socialist Workers Party in 2013 when it imploded over allegations of sexual assault by a senior member. Unlike ...”

“... Another time when he was home from college on a spring or winter break he called my father from a White Castle hamburger joint and told the old man he’d got himself into a situation with a dozen or so greasers and could my father maybe drive over and rescue him. Of course, my father loved shit like this and dragged me along, aged 14 or so. Well, we get ...”

“... where Israeli propaganda seems to lead a life of its own. Whereas, in 1975, Michael Adams and Christopher Mayhew were able to write about a coherent but unstated policy of unofficial British press censorship, according to which unpleasant truths about Zionism were systematically suppressed, the situation is not nearly as obvious so far as the British ...”

“... of the art world’, the letter was signed by Marina Warner, Michael Craig-Martin, Christopher Frayling and George Melly, also several artists and dealers, and as with all round-robins it wasn’t perhaps the letter any one of them would have written individually. Still, as a tactic, it showed blessed unworldliness, as surprising as it is ...”

“... to publish. ‘My book problems are complicated and I would like to ask your advice,’ he told Christopher Ricks. ‘My new book is a small one, some eighty poems … the story of changing marriages, not a malice or sensation, far from it, but necessarily, according to my peculiar talent, very personal. Lizzie is naturally very much against it. I am ...”

“... friend is what subtle Prudence Pelham (again) registered after one visit to Sidmouth: ‘I saw the white emptiness of your glass & thought it would never be filled.’ There was something of Prince Mishkin about Jones: his confounding candour, his obstacle-like presence in the room. If you could not marry him it was unclear what finally was to be done with ...”

“... in 1974, crammed with photographs, illustrations and comic strips, compiled and annotated by Christopher Gray. Years later I learned that Gray had rubbed shoulders with McLaren in a Notting Hill group called King Mob, a unofficial affiliate to the Situationist International. Some say it was Gray who first suggested what a wheeze it would be to create ...”

“... and Monday) and read the whole of Bridge with Rixi. I had just started Classics on Cassette by Christopher Grier when I was overwhelmed by a feeling of restlessness and began to wander round the room. I still had nearly half an hour in which to explore The Ground Hostess. There was more to see than I had realised at first. A blank television screen hung ...”