“... He locates the origins of The Jazz Singer a century before the movie’s release, in the age of Andrew Jackson. As the frontiersmen Daniel Boone and Natty Bumppo emerged as national heroes for an increasingly urban America, so the blackface minstrel show developed as ‘the first and most pervasive form of American mass culture’, playing to audiences on ...”

“... Rogers, Sir Cameron Mackintosh. Welcome, masters of spectacle: the designer Stephen Bayley and Ken Robinson (who Bayley glosses as ‘in charge of lavatories, parking, visitor flow’). Jobs for those who missed out on Channel 4, Arts Council panjandrums, reality benders. A seat on the board for Bob Ayling, Chief Executive of British Airways. For Ian ...”

“... coolly, with little of the venom or relish of such fellow plutocrats as Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller. Most criticism he ignored, cultivating a forbidding taciturnity. ‘He left no record of his response’ is a familiar motif in the biography. What Morgan left instead – and what the biography exhaustively records and ...”

“... sake of your intellectual work, which I prize above everything else in life, but for some sort of Robinson Crusoe game. You … dismissed the cook, who would have been happy to do some work in exchange for a stipend, and from morning to night you engage in inappropriate physical labour … I can only say, ‘Enjoy!’ – and still be upset that such ...”

“... of guilty of preaching only. Mr Bushel was directly bullied by the whole bench: Alderman Sir J. Robinson: I tell you, you deserve to be indicted more than any man that hath been brought to the bar this day ... Mr Justice May: Sirrah, you are an impudent fellow ... The Recorder: You are a factious fellow: I will set a mark on you ... The Mayor: I will ...”

“... The boys worked together on a student newspaper and in student politics. His younger brother, Andrew, took time out from his own media career to work as an adviser to Gordon when he first became an MP. These were the relationships he cherished: permanent bonds with people who will look out for you regardless. The ones he mistrusted were those based on ...”

“... The inconveniences of an insider/outsider, eavesdropping on his own sensibility. A Crabb Robinson without a Blake. A diarist reluctant to engage with himself as his true subject. Peter Ackroyd, Carolyn Cassady’s pin-up, was the man who had customised the art of biography so that it could fit seamlessly into an evolving project that included ...”

“... volumes and then reading the same poems in the unpunctuated original manuscript versions Eric Robinson and his fellow editors print in the big Oxford edition of Clare. A good example is sonnet 19: Deuouring time blunt thou the Lyons pawes, And make the earth deuoure her owne fweet brood, Plucke the keene teeth from the ficrce Tygers yawes, And burne the ...”

“... his Lincoln green beanie pulled right down, his hipstermonk beard, explained that his partner, Andrew, was the official guardian of the building. He had lived here now for a year and eight months. He was interested in photography and performance – and, in the wake of the recent excavation, history. The four-day removal of Hackney earth led the collective ...”

“... probably started the rot and then there was Glyn Daniel and his bow ties and today it’s Tony Robinson capering about professing huge excitement because of the uncovering of the (entirely predictable) foundations of a Benedictine priory at Coventry. His enthusiasm is anything but infectious and almost reconciles one to the bulldozer. And there’s always ...”

“... wife and daughter; Bryan Flanagan, found dead by the road side; Widow Davy’s daughter; Andrew Davy. KILTURRA ELECTORAL DIVISION – John May and son; Pat Marren, Widow Corlely, John O’Hara, John Healy’s two daughters.What interests me here is the resonance of the names, all common in Ireland now. John Healy’s two daughters, or Mary ...”