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“... celebrated innocence and others’ doubts about its authenticity. Reviewing World within World, Cyril Connolly discerned a distinction between Spender I (‘an inspired simpleton, a great big silly goose, a holy Russian idiot’) and Spender II (‘shrewd, ambitious, aggressive and ruthless’). Several observers played with some variation on Spender as one ...”

“... home the matter of the rent remained unresolved with the young people now four weeks in arrears. Cyril would never have put up with it, she told herself, though he would never have had lodgers in the first place and her own resentment made her feel both a bore and a spoilsport. Still she determined to speak out. Actually she hadn’t seen them for several ...”

“... a hackneyed thing’ was one justification, and hackneyed things turn up quite a lot in his work. Cyril Connolly – who, according to Meyers, was once caught stealing the home-grown avocadoes at the Villa Mauresque – wrote persuasively about Maugham’s ‘agitated dullness’ in Enemies of Promise (1938). Long sentence, short sentence, short ...”

“... closed its eyes. ‘We’ve just had a nice jab and now we’re going for a ta-ta.’ Behind a glass panel Midgley watched the concrete floors pass. ‘It’s very solidly constructed,’ said Uncle Ernest, looking at the floor. ‘These are overlapping steel plates. We can still do it when we try.’ ‘Let the dog see the rabbit,’ said the porter as ...”

“... carriages: instead, it’s overpriced to all, without favour. The trains shoot out of concrete and glass metropolitan halls and streak through Kent along the Eurostar track at 140 mph, reaching Ramsgate in an hour and twenty minutes. Soon they will be faster still. Yet when my train hummed into Ramsgate and I stepped out into the stillness of the seaside ...”

“... Elsewhere in his address Evans referred to ‘the so-called innocent Guildford Four’. Anthony Glass QC, for Style, said simply: ‘Armstrong was the bomb carrier.’ It was all to underline the defence contention that the detectives had no need to fabricate evidence because Armstrong was guilty and had freely confessed. Contrary to the impression the ...”

“... The Old Mill or The Old Forge or The Old Rectory. All of them, I imagine, with prams in the hall. Cyril Connolly’s strictures on this point may have been one of the reasons Larkin claimed The Condemned Playground as his sacred book and which led him, meeting Connolly, uncharacteristically to blurt out: ‘You formed me.’ But if his definition of ...”