“... the contents of Mitford’s parcel were emptied out onto the table, the collector – one Thomas James Wise – recognised the momentous find and bought all dozen copies.So the story went, at any rate. But the entire tale – sausages and all – was made up by Wise. In reality the book didn’t exist before 1893, when Wise himself had forged it, concocting ...”

“... a customs job and four sons of his own, Ferguson found himself drawn into the political machine of Lord North (Tua in the Gaelic code of its northern branch). The election of 1780 saw Ferguson active in the campaign to unseat George Dempster, the independent Member for the Perth grouping of burghs, who had supported economic reform and Dunning’s recent ...”

“... breathes something of that ‘air of reality (solidity of specification)’ which seemed to Henry James ‘the supreme virtue of a novel – the merit on which all its other merits ... helplessly and submissively depend’. Unfortunately, that one – Pat Barker’s The Century’s Daughter – is also a consciously ‘working-class’ fiction whose claim to ...”

“... vulnerability of the kind of flawed hero whose archetype is the Biblical prophet Jeremiah. (‘Oh Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived ... I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me ... But if I say “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and ...”

“... rejected, and at some point in 1705 or early 1706, he left Scotland. ‘There is no evidence,’ James Buchan writes, ‘he ever returned.’ Law was born in 1671, the son of William Law, a master goldsmith who, like other goldsmiths of his time, drifted from metallurgy into finance, becoming a lender to clients. Success in this sphere enabled the purchase ...”

“... MacBird, the latter’s goading wife, and various noblemen, including the Earl of Warren and Lord Stevenson, the Egg of Head (based, of course, on Earl Warren and Adlai Stevenson, the former Democratic presidential candidate). MacBird! had its origins in the anti-war teach-in movement at Berkeley, but copies began to sell in the hundreds of thousands and ...”

“... remains a new, almost completely undefined and extremely controversial proper noun,’ James Baldwin wrote in 1959. ‘No one in the world seems to know exactly what it describes, not even we motley millions who call ourselves Americans.’ Is it a dream or a nightmare, a democratic paradise or a bastion of white supremacy and religious ...”

“... redeemed from the archives of the Border nobility, with the blessing of a former prime minister, Lord Home. The memoir appears to have been written at some point in the 1820s, and is addressed to Frances’s daughter in order to acquaint her with certain passages in her mother’s early experience of an anxious family life. Frances died in 1817, the year ...”

“... subject of a private prosecution brought by Mr Taylor against the Chief Constable of Manchester, James Anderton, which is due to be heard at Bury Magistrates Court in December: at a hearing in Manchester in October, Mr Taylor was refused information as to the grounds for setting up the investigation. This began with the familiar pattern of police ...”

“... James Purdy​ ’s literary career comes with its own creation myth. He had been making no headway until in 1956 Edith Sitwell read a privately printed book of his stories and, ravished, threw herself into finding him a publisher and an audience. In one version of the event, Don’t Call Me by My Right Name, the book Purdy sent from America to Italy, made the last stage of its journey supernaturally, materialising by Sitwell’s bedside when she woke from a nap ...”

“... and John Barrymore, thought him more remarkable than any of them. On screen, his name appeared as James Stewart, and he worked hard at every detail. He was a canny businessman. Before the Second World War, he invested in a small airline. Soon after the war, taking advantage of the new freedom from studio contracts, he was one of the first actors to arrange to ...”

“... To William Henley he was ‘more the spoiled child than it is possible to say’. Henry James loved his writing – and loved mincing around its shortcomings – but saw him as ‘an indispensable light’. To others he appeared like a wraith or a tramp or a bag of bones, a hollow-eyed, coughing wretch. Henry Adams thought he looked like ‘an ...”

“... a pig’s back). We stare out along the coast to Tory Island, the home of the great naive painter, James Dixon. Below us Donegal is green, still, silent and peaceful. I’m too tired that evening to open either Himself Alone or The Idiot, and in any case I want to a make a start on a new book, a collection of short essays on single poems. I wish I’d packed a ...”

“... trip to the United States, where the big-game of major-league millionaires – Peter Widener, James G. Johnson, Samuel Kress – had leapt to profit from his publicised expertise. This was sometimes prompted by motives of undisguised envy and covetousness amongst themselves. On learning of BB’s descent on Widener’s optimistically attributed collection ...”

“... governors knelt before him, kissed his feet, rejoiced at his kingship; their faces shone. ‘The lord, who through his help has brought the dead to life, who in the midst of disaster and oppression has benefited all,’ that is the way they celebrated him joyfully, honouring his name. Cyrus adds a postscript in the first person: ‘I Cyrus, King of the ...”