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“... of minimalism that was fashionable when he was a nervous colt in the 1980s in favour of a bachelor-guy pack-rat approach where everything the author has ever seen, read, felt or heard on headphones is catalogued and databased (Nick Hornby with a dash of Derrida). Where graduates of the Gordon Lish ‘mini-me’ academy were often tagged as emotional anorexics ...”

“... love, even at his own coronation. Only 27 per cent of Americans think that he’s a ‘likeable’ guy. (Obama gets 61 per cent.) On television he projects a strange combination of self-satisfaction and an uneasiness about dealing with others who might doubt his unerring rectitude. The only well-known anecdotes about his bland life of acquiring wealth are both ...”

“... are not Russian transplants, but Californians seen in their native habitat. We begin and end with John, an upwardly-mobile computer scientist whose work is connected (just how is never made clear) with nuclear weapons manufacture. At the age of 26, John belatedly realises that he is a workaholic with no private ...”

“... an obscure White House intern became world famous and so did Matt Drudge. He was the ‘little guy’, the intrepid freelance reporter, ‘taking on the most powerful man in the world from a Hollywood apartment’. His ‘equaliser’ was the Internet. The White House’s attack dogs and spinmeisters called it ‘garbage’ and ‘sleaze’. Drudge (who ...”

“... bipolar Kulturkampf, it did leak out to a wide public through the fictions of Len Deighton and John Le Carré. Watching the shadow-play on the walls of the Cold War cave, and seeing the literal interpenetration of opposites as Karla penetrated ‘us’, and ‘we’ reciprocated, one could make the induction that the spy game was a thing in itself, and ...”

“... by them, and his fascination is communicated to the reader. Waugh, for example in the persona of Guy Crouchback in the Men at Arms series, is only seduced by a vision of what should be: wife, Church, family, class – all in their proper places. Such idealism is hardly appropriate for a novelist, no matter how he may feed on the negative consequences of its ...”

“... last he exclaimed: ‘I have never felt such charm in any conversation since I used to talk with John Henry Newman, at Oxford.’ ‘I am John Henry Newman,’ the lady replied, raising her veil to show the well-known face. The touchingly beautiful and moving end of Newman’s poem, ‘Lead, Kindly Light’, is a perfect ...”

“... or timid or scared’ to elicit so much as an invitation to impropriety. This, after all, is the guy who ‘finds it trying to walk anywhere with a student’, to whom ‘conversation is tough enough when everyone stands in one place,’ and who shudders to think that ‘forward movement creates so many chances for awkward stalls and collisions, decisions ...”

“... and slowly, and at great length, that he’s recently got into some really great music by this guy named Prince. Thanks, Bill. WE KNOW. And what use is that?Because, whatever Gates says, the biggest problems aren’t technological. The people working on technological solutions already know what to do: stop burning fossil fuels and replace them with ...”

“... that day at the crimes of England and her associated military reprobates. One who did so was Major John C. Spahr, an executive officer with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323, based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, but serving during the spring of 2005 in the Persian Gulf on the USS Carl Vinson. Major Spahr was 6 feet 3 inches tall and did a ...”

“... or three who fell down on the job (the diplomats who failed to rumble Hitler) or those who, like Guy Burgess, simply did something the influence of which on events is ‘too profound to ignore’. So much for the word ‘Great’. The word ‘Britons’ is also strained by the inclusion of, for example, Gandhi, Smuts and De Valera. The subtitle ...”

“... wants to win the Nobel Prize ... Roth. Roth is just a fuckin’ masturbator, a wanker, man, in the john, whackin’ off. There is a disquisition on Shylock himself. There is a long salt-cod-rabbinical ramble, as told by a Mossad agent, on why Jews must never commit loshon hora – viz. the telling of cruel stories against themselves. Much of the material Roth ...”

“... seldom given love scenes. Plus, he was losing his hair. He wore a lot of hats at Warners, but a guy liked to have good hair. Then some magic descended on him, and the magician was John Huston, who wrote the script for High Sierra (1941). It’s the story of a veteran gangster, Roy Earle, who wants peace and a new ...”

“... So he lived with his ‘secret’, which really consisted only in his knowledge that Guy Burgess and his lieutenant Blunt had at one time served Soviet Intelligence. One could hardly call this a double life. Straight told his wife about Blunt soon after his recruitment, and agreed with her that he should see ‘Green’ no more. Indeed, as editor ...”

“... he (or we) can handle, and solves some of it in his own fashion. This fashion doesn’t please John Brolin as Bigfoot, the crony/tormentor cop, who wanted more arrests. Katherine Waterston is very persuasive as Doc’s returning old flame, a beach girl who has got herself involved in an elaborate scheme to take a rich man’s money from him; and Jena ...”