“... English acquaintance have written brief, anecdotal accounts based on their memories of him – John St John’s To the War with Waugh has 56 pages, Frances Donaldson’s Portrait of a Country Neighbour 118, while those collected in Evelyn Waugh and his World are naturally shorter still. It is true that Alec Waugh ...”

“... New York journal on 18 February. This was not a new sentiment in the United States. In 1823 John Quincy Adams had suggested that ‘there are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation,’ so all New World Newtons ought to know what to do: if an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ...”

“... obscene’. So it is a comfort to find all these cruelties belied in the portrait of Moore by John Butler Yeats, reproduced in Gray’s book. There sits a harmless, walrus-moustached gentleman of 53, a little melancholy in expression, but by no means satyr-like, fresh-from-the-womb or squiffy. The year of the portrait was 1905, when Moore, surprisingly ...”

“... life of Civvy Street, when the Kray Twins ruled London – or so the timorous newspapers claimed. John Dickson, a former member of the Krays’ firm, has somehow produced a well-written book, Murder without Conviction. ‘We looked like any normal businessmen in our pin-striped suits,’ he says, describing the firm’s negotiations with the Mafia. The Krays ...”

“... Spectator where he found the famous pieces by J.D. Scott and Anthony Hartley, or the scripts of John Wain’s Third Programme magazine First Reading, or copies of the Reading limited editions of Wain and Amis. Mr Morrison claims to have eschewed gossip and attended instead to such questions as: ‘Did the writers know each other? Is there any evidence of ...”

“... England (S.T. Bindoff, 1950), England Under the Tudors (G.R. Elton, 1955), Tudor England again (John Guy, 1988), branding the age – see J.A. Williamson’s The Tudor Age (1953) – with the logo of the double rose of the dynasty which, conveniently, coincided with a generous 16th century of 118 years, 1485 to 1603. It is a good question how we would have ...”

“... panics, his horse bolts, he faints and falls and breaks his hip. When the great surgeon (‘Sir John’) who tends him reluctantly confirms that he will never be able to ride again, Sainty ‘heaved a sigh of unmistakable relief. “Ah! well, that’s a comfort, anyhow,” he said.’ From now on, Sainty’s lameness will be the useful badge of his ...”

“... all the more sweeping because back in England the pattern of land ownership was still very varied. John Darby’s huge estate map of Smallburgh, Norfolk, dated a year before Gilbert set sail and now in the British Library, shows a rich mixture of strip-fields, commons and orchards, as well as the large number of fields already enclosed by the landowner and ...”

“... sergeant major is a can of McEwens lager.10 March. The Independent pursues its campaign against John Birt over his tax arrangements. On another page it boasts its acquisition of Jim Slater as its Stock Exchange commentator.13 March. To Weston to see Mam, who is dulleyed, expressionless, absent. The sun is hot through the blinds and the radio full ...”

“... does not cite Mead on this useful point. She tries to recruit help further afield, from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. The name of Smith is cunningly brought in, and will tease the amour-propre of the rat scholars, but there is more wit than sense in the choice. Smith’s ...”

“... of US-Soviet relations, complete with a speech by Olivia de Havilland … The next day, John Wayne learns that the Selective Service board has extended his 3-A deferment. Hot dog! The star celebrates Thanksgiving Day by carving turkeys at the canteen, even as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meet in Tehran to plan the US invasion of Europe. The ...”

“... children had been thrown, was ‘sacred ground’. Dyer, like Neill and the equally psychopathic John Nicholson, was notable for his piety. Wagner might also have reached further back, to Rollo Gillespie’s execution of hundreds of unarmed prisoners in a fives court after the mutiny at Vellore in 1806, which recalls Dyer’s brutal floggings on the tennis ...”

“... that of Lillian Ross, who in 1952 wrote Picture, an arresting, intimate account of the making of John Huston’s movie of The Red Badge of Courage.* But Joseph Mitchell was doing a similar thing; John Hersey used something of the method in writing Hiroshima, as did James Agee in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Since we’re ...”

“... 9.1), cleansing lepers (Matthew 8.1-4), feeding thousands (Luke 9.10-17) and raising the dead (John 11.1-43), but I never quite managed any of those, and had to make do with speaking in tongues (Acts 2.4), having visions (Acts 2.17) and receiving words of wisdom (1 Corinthians 12.8) instead.* I was 17 years old when I started. I was from Essex. I’d ...”

“... We get a glimpse of Cambridge high life: the gluttony and gambling – swans for the eating, Van John all night, with ‘the Dr’ picking up the tabs. Darwin laughed modestly at the paralysis of his faculties through inertia, but the image of enforced idleness at Christ’s is misleading. There was riding (his horse came up too), but more important he was ...”