“... In 1995 Michael Howard, the Tory Home Secretary, dismissed Derek Lewis from his post as Director General of the Prison Service and appointed David Ramsbotham Chief Inspector of Prisons. Lewis then wrote a book about his experience – Hidden Agendas: Politics, Law and Disorder (1997) – which reflects very badly on Howard ...”

“... an F15 or a smart missile. Note also that with the sudden disappearance of April Glaspie and John Kelly, the present war-making Administration has been run without a single professional who has any real knowledge or experience of the Middle East, its languages or its peoples. Such as it was, Iraq’s case against Kuwait – a case to some degree encouraged ...”

“... villages – Allingham’s versions in Suffolk, and Anthony Price’s Duntisbury Royal in Gunner Kelly – but it was Sayers who truly saw the way, and rather than trying to build such a village from scratch, simply borrowed Oxford. In so doing she mapped onto one another the hermetics of the detective story, of the dreaming spires, and (via the ...”

“... primed to scan his new novels for glimpses of earlier characters. Brooklyn features a vignette of Michael Redmond, the schoolteacher father of Eamon in The Heather Blazing. There is also a reference to Eamon himself: ‘He’s studying, I’d say. That’s what he usually does.’ Later in the novel, we recognise yet another character from The Heather ...”

“... effort, a novel about a historian of the Nazis who is also a Nazi sympathiser – in 1995, Robert Kelly, in a somewhat grudging review in the New York Times, spoke honestly about the prompt reviewer’s quandary: ‘It is not much comfort to lay aside this infuriating and offensive masterpiece and call it a satire, as if a genre could heal the wounds it so ...”

“... Paul, called her Doke. Childhood friends called her Dodo or Didi or Priscilla Preoccupied. Michael Curtiz called her Miss Lachrymose (she could weep on cue). Jack Carson called her Zelda. Fans called her Miss Huckleberry Finn. Film crews called her Nora Neat and Dorothy Detail. A staff assistant called her Janie O. Gene ...”

“... 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 come through social revolution. For Briggs, it was through knowledge: an eruption of public education whose lava would overflow all the ...”

“... real name is revealed: in his next appearance in the diary he is, for the first time, ‘E. Kelly’. A fragmentary entry, 1 August 1583, also seems to be about Kelley – ‘a Worcestershire man, a wicked spy, came to my house: whom I used as an honest man and found nothing being as I used’. Dee also found that Kelley had been snooping through his ...”

“... its journey to judgment, lucky, I suppose, not to be seen off with a cheerful message from Henry Kelly. With it being Gerontius I’m surprised the whole thing isn’t a plug for Saga’s ‘specialised insurance for those of 50 and over’. Excepted from these strictures about Classic FM is Michael Mappin, who keeps the ...”

“... was the dominant emotion. A signalman described the consequences of an attack on the destroyer Kelly in 1940, on condition that he remained anonymous. That torpedo broke my nerve. Before, I always slung my hammock and undressed before getting into it, but after it I never slung it nor undressed when the ship was at sea. I slept as best I could on the ...”

“... were once plentiful in Dublin. I became interested in a gloss on page 1230 which states that ‘Michael Begnal suggests, perhaps not entirely seriously, that she [Martha Clifford, from whom Bloom receives a letter] is actually Ignatius Gallaher.’ This thesis, we learn from the copious bibliography, was first aired by Begnal in the James Joyce Quarterly in ...”

“... notes) Vol. – Volunteer – Thomas Ashe, who died in Mountjoy Prison 25 September 1917, to Vol. Michael Devine, INLA, who died in the Maze 20 August 1981. Above is a dove of peace caged in barbed wire; below the quote: ‘I’ll wear no convict’s uniform, nor meekly serve my time.’ Less ringing, and not attributed to the IRA, is the nearby Bloody Sunday ...”

“... unit. Some of the stories obtained this way were trivial, though intrusive: George Michael wept in his jail cell, for example, or a male British Airways worker secretly wore high heels. Others were more serious: security lapses at Heathrow, or equipment shortages in Afghanistan. Almost anything could be obtained if the offer was big enough: in ...”

“... Fourth grade: Mrs Froelich (Catholic). Fifth grade: Catholic Mrs Keaton. Sixth grade: Catholic Mrs Kelly. I don’t recall the new guy’s name. I can’t even picture him. In fact, the only thing I remember is that he made us write an essay on some conquistador. I chose Hernando Cortez – probably because, like Keats, I like the name. (Keats meant Balboa, of ...”

“... fractious era. No global hullabaloo of youth culture: impossible to imagine Altamont or Live Aid, Michael Jackson on the Thames, Bono cold calling George Bush mid-gig, Katy Perry in orbit. No personal touchscreen beckoning itchy fingers. Just gazing dreamily into the distance or cycling about aimlessly on long summer afternoons. Boredom and its cloud-drift ...”