“... of the Savoy, Leonard Smithers, himself a great connoisseur of erotica, Beardsley noted: ‘I read in the papers here that Stead has established an agency for the adoption of children. Is it true? If so I certainly mean to adopt some nice little girl who could at once satisfy my maternal, amatory and educational instincts. This quite seriously.’ It was ...”

“... brilliance of his townscapes and the odd angles and framing of his compositions can also be read as a response to the abundance of the modern city. Menzel was a brilliant observer who had had no reason to learn the craft of formal composition. Whether the oddity and lack of smoothness in his compositions was a sign of naivety, or the result of a ...”

“... the grey scale, with no hue but with some variations in brightness. It is not an easy painting to read, even when you know its title and its origin, and seems to fall somewhere between allusion and abstraction. For Richter, photography suggested a way forward for painting which would enable it to incorporate the lessons of abstraction, minimalism and the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... of Fontainebleau, which led her to investigate the famous ancient oak there, which led her to read up about a 1400-year-old yew, now gone, in the village where she grew up, which led her to visit the three vast oaks in Fredville Park in Kent known as Stately, Beauty and Majesty. ‘I always need that tiny thread to get myself going,’ she once said. What ...”

“... with masculine approbation. To be sure, Amory Blaine boasts in This Side of Paradise of having read it twice, but on the whole there can be no other book so loved by one sex and ignored by the other. In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, Simone de Beauvoir writes: ‘There was one book in which I believed I had caught a glimpse of my future self: Little Women ...”

“... about Orwell, including the memoir of Richard Rees and The Unknown Orwell by William Abrahams and Peter Stansky (lamed by the late Soni Orwell’s refusal of permission to quote), and, more recently, the expansive Life by Bernard Crick, at first authorised by the widow to emphasise her rejection of Stansky and Abrahams, and later de-authorised by her to ...”

“... well as about Measure for Measure, which Leavis admired and which Wittgenstein may or may not have read or seen but was not predisposed to like. Yet it would be wrong to suppose that Hawkes is merely engaged in a ludic ramble. He earns some of his jokes, and one of the best things about his books is that he has the skill, rare in these and most other times, to ...”