“... candidate – though the young Williams privately thought Foot too Oxford Union for Pandy village hall. In 1939 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, an informal precursor of the post-war scholarship boy, and in his first term joined both the University Socialist Club and the student branch of the Communist Party. Within Cambridge English his main ...”

“... skirmished with police outside, Lorre sat in a ‘subterranean bohemian wine place called Majolica Hall’ with some friends: a group of writers, actors and composers. One of them started teasing him, saying how funny it was that he always seemed to play ‘a monster or a second violin’, never an ‘important classic part’. ‘You’re thinking of ...”

“... of a German-controlled Europe made such detachment harder to sustain. As the liberal historian John Thompson shows in A Sense of Power, it was neither the threat that the Germans and Japanese posed to the US mainland that drove the country into the war, nor the imperative to secure international markets, since the US economy in the 1940s was overwhelmingly ...”

“... what do you mean “something”? The thing that will happen to you is called death and there’s no ifs or buts about it.’ ‘He’s so pessimistic him, isn’t he?’ my granny would say. ‘Always had a dark side. Probably got it from his uncle Peter. He was like that as well. Morbid.’ ‘You’re just trying to draw attention to yourself,’ my father ...”

“... narrowed against bright light: a non-combatant shocked to find himself exposed on the hustings. No Londoner, according to the spin-doctors, is ever going to vote for a beard. The candidate, a Father Christmas in civvies, knows that better than anyone, knows he’s on a loser, but it hasn’t dowsed his fire. Actually, this fly-pitched outlaw, spotted on the ...”

“... University of Reading). But if post-colonialism and women’s studies are anything to go by, no academic discipline can really be said to have arrived until it receives the final mark of legitimacy: a Routledge Reader. At a time when library budget cuts have left the supply of original academic monographs without any corresponding demand, collections of ...”

“... 2024, London’s annual Mid-Century Modern fair celebrated its 21st anniversary in Christison Hall, a light, airy, wood and concrete ceremonial space in the grounds of Dulwich College. Here you could shop for Panton, Knoll or Eames chairs, World Expo posters or fabrics by Lucienne Day, and leaf through a range of zines, maps and books, while the building ...”

“... charming event in the official national calendar gather for a cup of tea in the Georgian town hall of a small market town in the West Midlands. There is a great deal of scarlet in evidence, in the robes of the assembled Council and of sundry invited academics, white in the vestments of the local clergy, and a respectable quantity of gold in the mayoral ...”

“... stilettos by Salvatore Ferragamo, scarlet satin, encrusted with matching rhinestones.’ There’s no place like home, I thought. ‘Estimate: $4000-6000.’ And further along a hand-knitted cardigan, ‘with a brown geometric pattern and matching knitted belt. Worn by Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and featured in a series of photographs by George Barris taken on the ...”

“... from these paintings and there they were: Lady Una Troubridge with a monocle in her eye; Radclyffe Hall in a marvellous hunting outfit with a terrific hunting hat. It was the all-time ultimate gallery of all the famous dykes from 1880 to 1935 or thereabouts.Barney walked round the room telling Capote about each picture painted by Brooks, her long-term ...”

“... was inspired by the idea that ‘reality is a thing that has to be reinvented continually.’ With no family to confine him, he used school holidays to venture out. A ‘seasoned hitch-hiker’ by the age of 16, he visited the far west of England and the Welsh Marches, as well as Scotland: he cycled through the Highlands in 1935 and, a year later, attended a ...”

“... my education proper was finished. December 1951 was sunny but bitterly cold and though there was no snow the Cam was frozen and the lawns and quadrangles white with frost; coming to it from the soot and grime of the West Riding I thought I had never seen or imagined a place of such beauty. And even today the only place that has enchanted me as much as ...”

“... was a tough-minded drive to find mechanical explanations. When England’s greatest living poet, John Milton, wanted to explain why we are as we are, he retold the ancient story of Adam’s sin and consequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden. When Alexander Pope wrote his Essay on Man in the following century he took care to parallel his work with ...”

“... one does: ‘When I was in graduate school I was startled to find this story’s source in The John Collier Reader, – or so I have always believed until this afternoon, when I first riffled, then paged carefully, front to back, back to front, through the local copy (Knopf, 1972) and discovered no trace of such a story ...”

“... Queen’ for ‘Oliver’s Army’. Abba seemed to hark back to the early days of rock’n’roll, capturing its bubblegum paradox of disposability and durability, its youthful immediacy if not its charged libido. They steered clear of 1970s excess, indulging in neither progressive pomp nor sidelong voyaging.Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid ...”