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“... her will, and her life became very bitter to her.’ In his sympathetic study of Pattison, H.S. Jones argues that the ‘wall of ice’ which eventually divided the Pattisons did not form until the breakdown of sexual relations in 1875-76, documented in agonising detail in the couple’s correspondence. But it is all too clear from Francis’s own writings ...”

“... 55 readymades, a series of dioramas, followed by polyester mannequin heads they had bought at Peter Jones and then decorated. A box named ‘Aunt Eater’ contains a figure of a woman in sensible clothes standing before a dangerously large anteater, in a fantasy of animal revenge. One head, served up on a plate, is framed by herbs and cutlery, with ...”

“... as something that, being broken, was only fit for abuse.’ In his new novel, Pilcrow, Adam Mars-Jones slips in a quick reference to ‘One Arm’, when the narrator, a disabled boy called John Cromer, tells us that he and a schoolfriend ‘wept together over “One Arm” – Jimmy’s tears the more surprising since he knew the story so ...”

“... suit (Lorca wore one) and the abandonment of formal syles of address (a letter home from Jack Jones begins ‘Dear Comrade’). The hopes of those who went to Spain are still there to rebuke ...”

“... looking at the portraits close to for such details – all the time keeping in mind things Rica Jones and Martin Postle explain in their catalogue essay, ‘Gainsborough in His Painting Room’.* For example, that he said he could not ‘without taking away the likeness’ touch a portrait ‘unless from the life’; the report from Ozias Humphry, who ...”

“... any longer cared to try for this sort of thing. Lawrence Gowing, writing of a painting by Thomas Jones who was in Rome a century and a half earlier, explains: ‘The normal way of gathering information about nature is in a drawing, but this oil sketch is nothing like a drawing. It is based not on line but on solid colour matched in value and hue to visual ...”

“... on the floor.I knew that the captain of the Bonhomme Richard had been a Scotsman called John Paul Jones: I had once passed through Kirkbean, the Kirkcudbrightshire village where he was born. And I was vaguely aware that Jones had been involved in a daring raid on Whitehaven in Cumbria, although – since he was said to be ...”

“... first the Pre-Raphaelites were able to rouse both anger and admiration; a Soho sex shop with Burne-Jones posters as its sole window decoration suggests that whatever it was about their work that made people uneasy still tells. Pre-Raphaelite pictures can be memorable even when they are unlikeable: indeed, are sometimes most memorable when most ...”

“... of Oxbridge voices reviewing an exhibition selected by and posthumously mounted as a tribute to Peter Fuller. The wannabe Oxbridge voice of Giles Auty, art bumbler for the Spectator, declares ‘Peter’ was led by his arguments rather than his eyes. Up speaks real Oxbridge voice, while duly patronising to Auty – not ...”

“... for her hairdresser. A year later they move into a new house in Milton Keynes. Their neighbour, Peter Horn, is a driving instructor and divorcee. Charlie persuades him to give Maureen lessons at a discount for cash, and it isn’t long before they start an affair. Maureen also takes up shoplifting: she enjoys the thrill of not getting caught, of discovering ...”

“... of having their knees nailed to the furniture. The fallen state of Private Eye is illustrated by Peter McKay’s foolish and ill-written book, Inside Private Eye, but scornful young readers should remember that this downmarket old fogey was once a young fogey. It stood up to the Krays, a plucky little public-school rag-mag. This brings us back to The Old ...”

“... been incorrectly diagnosed and of the wrong answers half had come from specialists in cardiology. Peter Fleming’s absorbing history does not contain this sobering information, but then it stops at 1970 – and on an upbeat note, with the introduction of cyclosporin, the immunosuppressant drug, and an improved outlook for heart transplant patients. What ...”

“... Those Englishmen most likely to sympathise with the new arrivals, whether Chartists like Ernest Jones or George Jacob Harney, ‘advanced’ publicists like G.H. Lewes or G.J. Holyoake, or even established writers like Carlyle or John Stuart Mill, had limited means and little patronage. But most new arrivals found that their heroism on the barricades or ...”

“... up in the 1850s as a soda-water manufacturer). Also from Manchester is the argumentative Reginald Jones Richardson, another Chartist convict from 1840, whose faith in good old Saxon freedoms led him eventually to work for the Ancient Foot Paths Association. The wonderfully melodramatic Dr Peter McDouall, who urged on the ...”

“... Then in Leviathan, published some years later, Auster uses the same initials for the narrator, Peter Aaron; and anagrammatic sleight of hand (Delia/Lydia, Iris/Siri: Auster’s real-life loves past and present) further blurs the boundaries between his facts and his fictions. So one approaches his openly autobiographical Hand to Mouth with ...”