“... of her time at Cambridge that she got her own first ‘dusty answer’. She fell for the dashing David Keswick, who seemed so ‘very, very smitten’ that after one kiss she knew they would be together for ever. She was devastated when he explained he had been engaged to somebody else for years. She renounced love and made a short, disastrous marriage on ...”

“... scatology a subversive weapon. Sometimes Newton’s pleasure seems merely ‘schoolboyish’ – David Alexander’s word – because what Crowninshield would later call the ‘grossness and somewhat fat overstatement’ overwhelm any political point. Not so, however, when Newton shows Napoleon Establishing French Quarters in Italy by having the Pope kiss ...”

“... said that unless the German army withdrew it would mean war. ‘Broken-hearted I begged David Margesson to do something but he was determined. “It must be war, Chips, old boy.”’ When the declaration came the following morning, Channon felt that ‘our old world or all that remains of it, is committing suicide, whilst Stalin laughs.’But for ...”

“... was an awful woman called Gallery Nell, who would go to a first night and if it wasn’t by Noel Coward she’d start the most terrifying booing going. AH: Was she thrown out? FW: No, no. The play would stagger on for another night, when I would be there reviewing it. Gallery Nell would still be there booing it, and then it would come off, and as I was ...”

“... Among them was the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who had travelled to Sri Lanka with David Miliband to argue, in vain, for a truce. Rajapaksa’s remark was in one sense a tribute to how Kouchner has changed the world. It is Kouchner, more than anyone, who has eroded the distinction between philanthropy and combat. As a young gastroenterologist ...”

“... comprised the widowed Queen Mary, her four surviving sons and one daughter. Edward, known as David, was his mother’s favourite. The heir, the best-looking, the most popular, he was spoilt beyond redemption. The second son, the Duke of York who became the reluctant king, was the self-effacing naval officer hampered by an acute stammer. Of the younger ...”

“... from his mother’s side, he has inherited a fertile imagination and a refined intellect. He is no coward, but he fears that his conscience, like Hamlet’s, might make him overthink, crippling his ability to focus on fighting and killing. He resigns his commission rather than go to Egypt because he is convinced that hesitation of this sort will make him the ...”

“... who spilled coffee on her best Moroccan slippers, an ex-boyfriend who broke into her flat, ‘the coward’, ‘the German man’). Yet she returns again and again to scenes with Xavier: their conversations and impasses, his obtuseness, his tenderness, his maddening yet endearing quiddity. Her ‘previous publisher’ sends on (via email) a letter from her ...”

“... yella,’ was the way he used to describe the young senator, meaning not that he was a coward (like all the Kennedys, JFK was physically absurdly brave) but that he was jaundiced and gaunt. As it turned out, the ‘yella’ Kennedy looked golden on TV. But Johnson must have suspected that Kennedy’s health would break down over the next eight ...”

“... to the music hall. Debunking the Victorian or fuddy-duddy in a flip tone, however, is more Coward or Waugh than Pooter. (In later years she would look back and ‘wriggle’ at her facetiousness.) She is not always high-spirited. Her diary is also a commonplace book where she transcribes passages from authors whose wisdom inspires her – the popular ...”

“... as saying that Gielgud’s production of The Merchant of Venice at the Old Vic ‘made Maugham and Coward seem like two Nonconformist parsons from the Midlands’. It must have been an exciting time to be in the theatre and some of Wardle’s best pages are about the early days of Motley. They had taken as a studio Chippendale’s old workshop behind St ...”

“... not only needing applause, but needing (badly needing) other people to have a little less of it. David Frost once asked him what he wished he’d known at 20. ‘To hold my tongue,’ Gielgud said. ‘I’ve talked too much, gossiped too much.’ The fear of gossip can run a life, and sometimes ruin one; Michael Redgrave was an actor powered by ...”

“... Brigaders, Trotskyites, Communists, pacifists failed by their tribunals. The playwright David Hare declared recently that working-class conscripts now met ‘the officer class’ for the first time and rebelled; but plenty had met the people issuing orders, at least since Peterloo. Moreover, an Army largely unemployed except in training or retreat ...”

“... someone else back and that’s what neither of them was good at.28 March. Another death, this time David Storey whom I liked and found sympathetic, though I might run into him only occasionally and most often in M&S. It was always cheering, even if these days he was often shuffling as much from the medicines he was taking as from old age. But he would call me ...”

“... came to stay with us, and we went to Venice on Arturo Lopez’s yacht … Oh yes, I forgot Noel Coward – he fell in love with Jack. Jack hated it All. Later, in his thirties, he would tire also of the Greeks: ‘The children are so horrid: have learned only five Greek words, in order to say: “Shut up, fat girl” and “Shut up, fat boy.”’ He also ...”