“... soldier, the brother of a friend’s friend, who was sent to a hospital in Kyiv. He was put on a ward with men who’d lost arms and legs, and was so traumatised by guilt that his sister found him worse when he was discharged than when he was admitted.One afternoon on Khreshchatyk I saw a slight, pale, bearded soldier in cammos smoking outside a restaurant ...”

“... Christen, adventuress installed by Powell in Islington as stenographer for Orwell, or Georgina Ward, actress in a belated stage version of his prewar novel Afternoon Men – tell no tales. His friend Alan Ross, editor of the London Magazine, thought that surrounded by promiscuous friends, he may have simply found a vicarious pleasure, productive for his ...”

“... brown brogue boots. He was 47 but looked about 29. There was something studied about him – the Alexander McQueen scarf, the lawyerly punctilio – and I’d never met anyone who spoke so easily about such large sums of money. When I asked him the point of the whole exercise he said it was simple: ‘Buy in, sell out, make some zeroes.’ MacGregor ...”