“... of late capitalism. Beckett himself condemned this ‘over-reading’, and told the actor Patrick Magee that Hamm was ‘the kind of man who likes things coming to an end but doesn’t want them to end just yet’ – a deeper insight than may at first appear. Small, as we might expect, thinks the most important words in Beckett’s play ...”

“... priest of Irish poetry: ‘a sentimentalist gone sour’.Among McGahern’s circle was the painter Patrick Swift, who in 1960 was in London, co-editing a magazine called X. The following year Swift published an extract from McGahern’s unpublished first novel. It was spotted by Charles Monteith at Faber, who went on to oversee the publication of many of ...”

“... suggestion of his employers he eventually adopted the ‘mutilated’ name Claude L. Strauss.) But Patrick Wilcken has set himself an unenviable task, because Lévi-Strauss was the embodiment of pudeur, an exaggerated, almost prudish sense of discretion. He was good at keeping secrets, and at dodging interviewers’ questions. (The interview, he said, was a ...”

“... frequented by the Didion-Dunnes and was defended by an attorney hired by the restaurant. Patrick Terrail, its owner, sent an orchid to John and Joan at the time of the arrest, including a note that said, ‘My heart breaks for you.’ Nick saw it and interpreted it as a treasonable offence on the part of his brother and Didion, whom he ...”

“... solid, mischievous’; Charles Swann, ‘wheezing with his awful respiration’; Patrick Parrinder, ‘silent, smiling, ironic’, the best-dressed of the party; Tariq Ali with ‘lustrous brown eyes’ but (Inglis claims) ‘a bit out of it all’. As a narrative device it is brilliant, setting the scene for what is to be a bleak ...”

“... was born, and Branwell, the feckless, drunken, stage-Irish brother whose first name was actually Patrick, was once burned in effigy by the plain people of Haworth with a potato in his hand.* The Brontës may have tried to become plus anglais que les anglais, in a long tradition of literary emigration to these shores, but their neighbours weren’t ...”

“... for those who’ve suffered such abuses. The reference is to the George Cukor film of the Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight, in which Charles Boyer drives Ingrid Bergman mad with self-doubt through devious manipulations that include the gradual damping-down of the gaslight lamps in their marital home. Use of the accusation might tend to exculpate the ...”

“... pinned up in his studio, sway and dart across the painting, like shoals of little fish, or as Patrick Heron put it in another watery simile, ‘like a piece of largescale fishnet drawn over the surface of the canvas’. Bonnard is loved by many painters, and by writers who paint, and there has been much excellent writing on him (Timothy Hyman’s Bonnard ...”

“... lack of campaign experience? Or was it Conservative Central Office and the then party chairman, Patrick McLoughlin? Or Lynton Crosby, the political consultant brought in at great expense from Australia, his business partner, Mark Textor, and their firm, CTF? Or the specialist boffins who understood the new virtual terrain of social media campaigning, such ...”

“... British and Irish governments. The peace process was on the verge of unravelling. An embarrassed Patrick Mayhew, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, announced that the British were only negotiating with the IRA because of McGuinness’s ‘conflict is over’ message. An indignant McGuinness denied responsibility; nobody in Ireland ‘with a titter ...”

“... it had been applied to the human race by W.C. Wells in 1813, and extended to other species by Patrick Matthew in 1831. Darwin hoped, however, to do some service to science by bringing these elements together in a single arc of argument, supported by masses of detailed observations. In the event he never completed the ‘big book’, but in 1859 he ...”

“... with all the charisma that moniker suggests (though to be fair he’s mostly unconscious); Patrick Hegarty and his bossy daughter Claire, a keen reader of the Irish Independent; Margaret Rose Sherlock, her Hello! magazine and rosary beads close at hand, visited by everyone except her wayward husband; and Jane Lohan, who has no visitors at all, though ...”

“... first two months of the new season, Arsenal were without a manager.Who they did have, however, was Patrick Vieira. Before Wenger arrived at Arsenal, he told the club to buy this young, unknown central midfielder from AC Milan. Arsenal were down 1-0 at home to Sheffield Wednesday on 16 September 1996 when, in the 28th minute, Vieira came on for his ...”

“... bicycle tour of France has something of all of these about it. Like Patrick Keiller’s film Robinson in Space (1997), which pursues the ‘problem of England’ through the eyes of an unseen narrator travelling in the spirit of Daniel Defoe along paths since obstructed by nuclear power stations and motorways, Robb covers French ...”

“... Supernatural or mystical elements in her books are typically associated with impostors like Patrick Seton in The Bachelors or Tom Wells in Robinson or Hector Bartlett in A Far Cry from Kensington. But for Alice Thomas Ellis faith is something nebulous and magical, it is God rather than man who moves in mysterious ways, and it’s all too easy to take ...”