“... saw around him capitalism’s monstrous waste of human potential. As Reid would put it, see the Ian Rankin living up that stair who will never write a novel, the Menuhin in the next tenement who will never hold a violin, the Chloe Kelly in that council block who will never hear the roar as she slams a ball into an open goal. For Reid, fairness would only ...”

“... a consequence of the condition’s being more widely known. In a piece for the LRB in 2006, Ian Hacking asked readers to assess two propositions:A. There were no high-functioning autists in 1950; there were many in 2000.B. In 1950 this was not a way to be a person, people did not experience themselves in this way, they did not interact with their ...”

“... Ant and modelled my character on the latest prodigy on the violin scene, a rockabilly called Nigel Kennedy. I developed a quiff and a nasal Bromley twang, wore my costume at home and at work, and never came out of character, even when going to confession at the Holy Redeemer in Cheyne Row. My fake London accent couldn’t have been that successful because the ...”

“... security service, a sort of Western Cheka, and Angleton actually got him an interview with Bobby Kennedy so that he could put in his request for $30 million to set up such an organisation. He was bitterly disappointed when the ambition wasn’t realised. In the end, Golitsyn did so much harm to Western intelligence services that an inquiry was held – to ...”

“... 1932 and raised in Pennsylvania, a child of the Depression, Updike reached prominence during the Kennedy era as American literature’s princely elf, his Jiminy Cricket nose peering down with amusement, his tall, gangly frame having the lanky assurance of someone preparing to sink a basket from the free throw line. (The scrape of sneakers on the basketball ...”

“... secret codes’. In exchange, the FBI turned a ‘blind eye to British activities on US soil’. Ian Fleming, posted to Washington, didn’t take to Hoover – ‘a chunky enigmatic man with slope eyes and a trap of a mouth’. British intelligence generally considered him out of his depth, if sufficiently discreet to be trusted with secrets.When America ...”

“... he ghosted his autobiography? To what extent did Ted Sorensen create the verbal manner of John F. Kennedy when he wrote Profiles in Courage, a book for which the future president won the Pulitzer Prize? And are the science fiction stories H.P. Lovecraft ghosted for Harry Houdini not the best things he ever wrote? There would be a touch of all this in the ...”

“... than three hundred staff were deployed immediately. Or that the council’s director of education, Ian Heggs, was in discussion on the morning of 14 June with the heads of eight local schools (I’ve seen the emails) about pupils from the tower. Nor that the education officers met with school heads and arranged for pupils to have psychological support and to ...”