“... except as a version of what television has accustomed us to call ‘fictionalised documentary’. Robert Phelps was able to construct a perfectly coherent autobiography from Colette’s scattered reminiscences, and present The Earthly Paradise as if it were, not an imaginative parallel to her life, but the real thing. All Colette’s biographers, even ...”

“... a large bulbous structure that contains its vital organs, including three hearts which pump blue-green blood. A tubular siphon is attached to the mantle, which the octopus uses variously for jet propulsion, respiration, excretion and inking predators. A full-grown octopus can range in size from the Giant Pacific, with its six-metre arm span, to the 2.5 ...”

“... of the next hour or so they met other patrol groups from the company. ‘We then did a U-turn on Green 9 and Green 12’ – these were combat zones – ‘and turned into an area known to us as “India”,’ says Lance Sergeant Stephen Phipps. ‘We then made our way through the al-Mukatil al-Araby district. I’m not ...”

“... to revise and correct the pages. When he was released, Wilde gave the manuscript to his friend Robert Ross, who had two copies made. He sent one to Lord Alfred Douglas; the other he later lodged in the British Museum. Sections from Ross’s copy were published in 1905 and in 1908. The complete version, based on the original manuscript, wasn’t published ...”

“... him the first issue of the Black Mountain Review and introduced him to the work of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly and Ray Johnson.Opinion is divided about his appearance. ‘He thought of himself as ugly,’ a boyfriend from the early 1960s said. ‘But when you saw Andy naked, he looked ...”

“... grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word.’ Having said some words in Latin, wearing ‘the subtle smile of death’s madness’, she will ...”

“... have seen a succession of David Attenborough hits: Blue Planet II, Dynasties and Dynasties II, The Green Planet and Frozen Planet II on the BBC; and on Netflix, Our Planet, A Life on Our Planet and Planet Earth II. Attenborough’s most recent series, Wild Isles, was watched by more than ten million people in the first month of its release. Blue Planet III and ...”

“... Jump for joy!(‘Lille’ is lace; ‘Eve’ is the character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) ‘Oh, Green Pastures was just a Technicolor movie,’ Jeffries sings, dismissing the 1936 film version of Connelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, historically important as the most respected racially condescending production of its time and a standard inclusion in ...”

“... between enraged Jewish erstwhile supporters and the traditional Tory worthies on the 19th green can hardly have been easy, and it’s not certain that Denis would have been altogether an asset. All we know for certain is that a new Tory agent was hired in 1962 with the mission of rebuilding the constituency party organisation almost from scratch and ...”

“... society exists to serve the economy, and not the other way around. True, the Secretary of Labour Robert Reich and other members of the Clinton Administration have rather suddenly taken to criticising the mass firings on the part of major corporations in general and of AT & T in particular (40,000 initially budgeted for, later reduced to 18,000). But at the ...”

“... Kim Il Sung really did attack South Korea first, in 1950, and that Stalin really did give him the green light to do so. He can provide a far clearer and much more astonishing picture of the relationship between Stalin and Khrushchev and the Communist regimes of what was then called the Third World: it would be fair to call his handling of this new material ...”

“... the eyes the greater the capacity to withstand pain: ‘As the colour went through blue-grey, green, hazel, light brown and dark brown so the reaction to pain increased on the average.’ Similar prejudices permeated discussions of how much pain was felt by women as compared to men. Francis Galton argued that European women may seem more sensitive than ...”

“... and a vigorous force on the folk music scene.) In 1935, the year of the general election, Robert Conquest stood as the Communist candidate in the mock election at Winchester and Frank deputised for him during the campaign. Some of the teachers were happy to see the boys thinking along these lines – or thinking at all about the drastic turn that ...”

“... holding a butterfly. I remember she was dressed a little like the flag of Brazil: blue sweater, green skirt, and wrap gleaming like gold armour. Her nails were nicely manicured and painted a sort of pearl grey. She seemed scared in general and nervous in particular, but I think I understood it was probably just her thing, this immense sense of ...”

“... restlessly up and down. In Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1982), fantasist Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), on a first date with barmaid Rita (Diahnne Abbott), hopes to impress her by leafing through his autograph album. It’s not long before our attention drifts away from his dismal performance to the restaurant behind him, where two illuminated ...”