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“... What you always suspected, but didn’t want to know, is explicitly stated in a quote from James Pope-Hennessy: ‘then it gradually dawns on one that she is entirely uneducated, interested in theosophy, dieting and all other cranky subjects, has conversation so dull that you could scream.’ There it is again, that ...”

“... a slasher – though there is a very severe notice of the autobiographies of Anthony Powell and Peter Quennell – and he seems to enjoy being generous to other reviewers, as when he justly praises John Updike. He is full of gratitude to literary editors, commemorating Ian Hamilton’s work on the New Review in terms only this side of idolatry. Such writers ...”

“... Reading Myself and Others. The Ghost Writer, ‘My True Story’, etc. In the preface to the last Peter Tarnopol solemnly announced that something truer than true was on its way: ‘Presently Mr Tarnopol is preparing to forsake fiction for a while and embark upon an autobiographical narrative, an endeavour which he approaches warily, uncertain as to both its ...”

“... only learned of this fifteen years later. The hunt for the fifth persists. It was the tortured James Angleton – erstwhile head of CIA counter-intelligence, who had learnt part of his trade from Philby – who bitterly and despairingly credited the KGB with creating ‘a wilderness of mirrors’. Maybe, Angleton took too literally the extravagances of ...”

“... In any case, Reid made his disagreements with Hutcheson explicit in his lectures at Glasgow: see Peter Kivy’s edition of Thomas Reid’s Lectures on the Fine Arts (1973). The conclusion is inescapable: either Jefferson changed his mind or he never noticed the problem. There is no evidence that he changed his mind, and it turns out that what Wills has ...”

“... field.Only eight years before, the high master of the fee-paying Manchester Grammar School, Eric James, had argued against greater social mobility as an educational objective, writing in the Guardian that ‘we must recognise with greater frankness the facts of human inequality.’ True, he admitted, children at academically selective (as well as ...”

“... was conversion to Protestantism, a step taken by (among others) an uncle of William’s, Peter Warren. Warren would ultimately become admiral of the fleet and famous as a British naval hero; he would also serve as a model, and patron, for his nephew. By marrying into a leading family of Dutch New Yorkers, the Delanceys, Warren acquired a direct stake ...”

“... Tom McClintock, the inestimable Arianna Huffington and the former Baseball League Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. By no coincidence, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy – on the Jay Leno Tonight show – on the day Issa withdrew. It was clear from the outset that if a ‘No on Recall’ vote supporting Davis failed to pass by even a slight ...”

“... loose with the dates and the references, claiming for example to have conducted an interview with Peter Lawford, the English actor and member of the rat pack, on a date some time after his death. Kelley is not just mean, or dangerous: she has a very powerful understanding of what makes a modern celebrity. She gets the journey, to use a favourite Oprah ...”

“... islet is crammed with men: Chief Vorstenbosch, Deputy Melchior van Cleef, Dr Marinus, Senior Clerk Peter Fischer, Junior Clerk Ponke Ouwehand, Arie Grote, Piet Baert, Ivo Oost, Wybo Gerritszoon. Their conversation is as cacophonous as their names. For instance: ‘most of us hands gather of an evenin’ in my humble billet, eh, for a little hazard ...”

“... within the paper and without: Tim Bale, Nick Cohen, Anne Perkins, Michael White, Martin Kettle, Peter Hain, Alan Johnson, Tony Blair (twice), Jonathan Jones, Frank Field, David Miliband (whose razor-sharp instinct for leadership contests led him to back Liz Kendall), Steve Coogan, Matthew D’Ancona, Betty Boothroyd. Papers aren’t just papers any ...”

“... sense, a mark impressed, engraved or otherwise made on a surface: a brand or stamp or cut. Peter Simon’s engraving of Fuseli’s ‘The Enchanted Island Before the Cell of Prospero’ for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (1797). The Compleat Drawing-Book is an example of the kind of educational artistic guide that flourished in the 18th century. The ...”

“... accomplished manner, complete with emblematic fruit, by John Michael Wright’s c.1668 painting of James Cecil, fourth Earl of Salisbury and his sister Lady Catherine, now at Hatfield. Unhelpfully, there is no indication on the canvas as to the pear-bearing girl’s identity, and no date either. However, a modern brass plaque affixed to the frame confidently ...”

“... read. To this day, many Glaswegians would agree.In 2022 a London-based urban designer called Peter Kelly set up a campaign group called Replace the M8. Kelly believes there is a nostalgia for ‘the completeness of the 19th-century city’. What does he want? Tunnels, he says, though he is aware that some cultural revolutionaries want anything resembling ...”

“... stylised composure; and Whitman’s composure finds its equal among American writers only in Henry James. With majestic aloofness, he likes, as he says early in Song of Myself, to be ‘both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it’. And like the games James plays in The Turn of the Screw, Whitman’s are ...”