“... with malice aforethought and for publication, to the diaries of Pepys who did not mean to be read. This is not to say that the Lyttelton Hart-Davis correspondence has not been found to be immensely readable. In his introduction to the sixth volume the editor explains that when the first of the volumes was ready for the press in 1978 he ‘had no great ...”

“... encouraged her as a writer and had been the first to seek publishers; that her first publisher, Peter Davies, had fostered her talent; and that Randall Jarrell had revived interest in her work. But there was an anger beyond these particular corrections which is well remembered by those who knew her in her last years. One colleague recalls her screwing up a ...”

“... the books will appear both to see and go through a great deal. The most disquieting voyage to read about is that of E.M. Forster’s Mrs Moore. She is a perfectly willing traveller, although she prefers being at home, and looks forward to getting back there. But her passage to India destroys the point of her life. In a sense it works too well – the ...”

“... work, taking precedence over the philosophical rulebooks and homilies favoured by Foucault and Peter Brown in their researches on sexuality. This deliberate prioritising of the erotic genre over the philosophical is celebrated by a striking image on the cover: Aristotle, on all fours, ridden by the hetaera Phyllis brandishing a whip. Considered morally ...”

“... like a totem, a lone barn, a rock-mouth funnelling down into the bowel of the limestone. If you read closely between the lines of Wainwright’s treatment of the Buttermere fell called Haystacks in his Western Fells of 1966 – the seventh book of his series on the Lakeland fells – a physical and emotional identity between the man and the place begins to ...”

“... Number 188, to the west of St Dunstan’s Church, opposite Ye Olde Cock Tavern, and in an echo of Peter Blayney’s central themes (the business of books, and the Reformation), close to the publishers D.C. Thomson (the Beano, the Dandy, Scotland’s Sunday Post) and the Protestant Truth Society. The printer Richard Pynson worked from here; the black-letter ...”

“... elude that soporific ‘and then’? So, it is little surprise to find the prolific genre-bender Peter Ackroyd beginning his brief biography of Edgar Allan Poe with a recounting of his subject’s final days. Never mind that Paul Strathern’s recent biographical study, Poe in 90 Minutes, and a new novel by Matthew Pearl, The Poe Shadow, made the same ...”

“... is free, but facts are sacred.’ By such lofty standards even the Guardian of Peter Preston falls short. Its reporters are men and women with opinions that shine out from its pages. Even if they start their careers with the news, they are hoping for preferment to the editorial pages. With luck, long service and a reputation for ...”

“... team’s loyal keeper between 1981 and 1998) gives the player’s reaction, and is a mournful read for any fan: ‘I hate Monday games for two reasons. First of all you get lower attendances than on a Saturday, and secondly people have usually spent their money by Monday and they are budgeting for the week ahead. I think it’s unfair ... Sky is now ...”

“... ultimately be judged and defined by what he does.’ A journalist who may be closer to events, Peter Snowdon ends his book on a more equivocal note: ‘If the last four and a half years have been testing for Cameron’s Conservative Party,’ he writes, ‘the next few will be far harder, whether the party wins or loses.’ Not that Snowdon is in any doubt ...”

“... the moon and the planets to the Empyrean, is a steep learning curve. The Paradiso is the least read of the Commedia’s three cantiche, and the hardest work. If for no other reason, these two new English translations, one by Robin Kirkpatrick, the other by the husband and wife team of Robert and Jean Hollander, should be welcomed. Each edition is the final ...”

“... as the heir to le Carré – one of an admittedly long list of legatees’. It’s hard not to read this throwaway remark as a glancing, self-deprecating self-portrait: in the universe that Herron has created in his Slough House series, the headquarters of one of Britain’s intelligence agencies is ‘the Park’ rather than ‘the Fairground’ or, as in ...”

“... wife. ‘Now we shall never know.’ The regular scenario for many of Barry’s jokes concerned St Peter at the gates of Heaven, so that when he finally arrived there last month it can have been no surprise.24 February. One doubtful blessing of my new and sophisticated hearing aids is that I can hear every rumble and gurgle of my stomach as well as the ...”

“... Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott; a straw bookmark showed that he was halfway into Volume II. He had read Lockhart before: he had read all of Scott several times since he was a child. The lives of writers were one of his major preoccupations: this biography, written by Scott’s son-in-law, absorbed him enormously. The first ...”

“... sound as two women pass in a doorway, the pink ribbon belt next to a naked waist, the socks that read ‘I don’t give a fuck.’ And the mysteries: why do bikinis make you look so much worse than you do naked? ‘Who is the woman,’ the worker in Vietnam double-stitching underwires into bras asks herself, ‘who will wear the bra I am sewing?’ And the ...”