“... But they operate in a void. There is nothing else in the books. This was in the mind of Edmund Wilson when he wrote the formidable essay called ‘Who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd?’ We can say only that, within the limitations of her craft, Agatha Christie can, at need, write with a verbal adroitness far exceeding anything that has gone before ...”

“... adapted it for the stage and then worked on the screenplay (the film starred Kirk Douglas and Dany Robin). When Hayes returned to the US, he began a new life as a member of the American middle class. A hatchet job on Eugene Lyons, whose book The Red Decade criticised the infatuation of American intellectuals with Stalin in the 1930s, was the final sign of any ...”

“... front, chins thrust forward, as if on their way to a Royal Marine assault course. Next appears Robin Cook, who is led aside by Alastair Campbell and rehearsed in conspiratorial whispers about what he is to say to the reptiles waiting across the road. Cook, whom I’ve never met, gives me a quick, suspicious look. Alastair, whom I have, carefully ignores ...”

“... Aeschylus’ rival Phrynichus was particularly noted for his choreographies, or learn from Peter Wilson in Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy that the shawm (aulos) which always accompanied a performance came in various shapes and sizes depending on the musical context (the ‘wedding shawm’, for example, consisted of one ‘male’ and one ...”

“... trail. Would Labour’s disaster of 5 May have happened if any of its best and brightest – Robin Cook, Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown, even John Smith – had stayed in Scotland to lead the party and the devolved government at Holyrood? Only Donald Dewar took the train back north and became first minister of Scotland in 1999. It ...”

“... signed by practically every major living architect, from Richard Rogers to Peter Eisenman, to save Robin Hood Gardens, Alison and Peter Smithson’s Poplar council estate, from demolition, met with exactly this response from Tower Hamlets Council. Architects, they said, may well enjoy the ‘daring’ and ‘fearless’ design of these two dilapidated mid-rise ...”

“... an historical problem of some complexity’, but gives no kind of answer; nor do we find one in Robin Jenkyns’s elegant coffee-table book, The Victorians and Ancient Greece, or in the far more searching Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain by F.M. Turner. One important cause of this failure was that though the universities became increasingly secularised ...”

“... hands. To be fair, there were some men she liked. They tended to be showbusiness people. She liked Robin Williams, Charlie Chaplin, Tommy Lee Jones and Al Pacino. She also liked Salinger. (‘Jerry’ had been a friend since the 1950s and Lillian could sometimes sound like a female Holden Caulfield, railing against the phonies.) She got a fine awareness of ...”

“... season is the Armani retrospective at the Guggenheim. Designed by the Post-Modern artist Robert Wilson, who has draped the Frank Lloyd Wright spiral ramps with white gauze, bathed the museum in patchouli and musk, and created a Japanese soundtrack to accompany the show, the exhibition is a perfect example of the blend of fashion, art, commerce and academic ...”

“... funny’, as he had to be ready to do imitations of famous black singers, a football team or Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees.Elton and Bernie worked fast: ‘Bernie got the lyrics to “Your Song” over breakfast one morning in Frome Court, handed them to me and I wrote the music in 15 minutes flat.’ He didn’t go around with melodies in his head. ‘I ...”

“... their youth and remembering some of the books they read then. There’s Camus and Sartre, Colin Wilson and Lawrence Durrell – not quite the literary equivalent of flares but inducing something of the same incredulity: ‘Did we really read/ wear these?’ I miss the atlas I really wanted and come away with one or two biographies, including a memoir of ...”

“... of them was when she was putting paint on. A few years before she died she went in for a Reliant Robin (to put more of her things in). It was actually yellow to start with, but that didn’t save it from an additional coat which she applied as Monet might have done, standing back to judge the effect of each brush-stroke. The Reliant stood outside my gate. It ...”

“... to stray into his territory. Indeed, he goes out of his way to say that ‘I did not do a Harold Wilson and publicly criticise Mervyn, even when on further occasions he volunteered advice on our fiscal policy.’ All he will say is that he called him in for a private chat, and reminded him of their understanding ‘that I would not comment on monetary policy ...”

“... the ranks of inscribed black and white photographs that line the walls of the dining-room: Harold Wilson, Derek Nimmo, David Steel, Jeremy Irons, Clement Freud, Norman Tebbit, Barbara Castle, Elaine Paige, Cecil Parkinson, Nigel Lawson, Robin Day. It’s like being compulsorily inducted into a dinner party from hell, a ...”

“... Sophie Smith, Rebecca Solnit, Alice Spawls, Amia Srinivasan, Chaohua Wang, Marina Warner, Bee Wilson, Emily Witt Elif BatumanWhen​ Roe v. Wade was overturned, I was finishing the tour for my new novel, Either/Or. It’s a sequel to my first novel, The Idiot. Both books are set during my own college years, in the mid-1990s: a time when numerous people ...”