“... who was then 52 and lived in Collioure on the French part of the Mediterranean coast, just north of the border with Catalonia. He had published three gloomily introspective novels for adults, one of which had been praised by Delmore Schwartz, and he was an elegant, speedy translator, most recently of Simone de Beauvoir. Further information was in short ...”

“... seven thousand German and Dutch mercenaries. At the same time a force of more than 26,000 marched north at speed to meet King James IV’s army in Northumberland for the slaughter of Flodden. There was campaigning on a similar scale in 1522, 1544 and 1545. Even the huge windfall delivered by the dissolution of the monasteries wasn’t enough to cover all the ...”

“... was it because, by getting inside the White House, he had exposed them for failing to do the same? Elizabeth Drew in the New Republic dismissed Fire and Fury: ‘better books’, she said, would be published soon. Better books? She mentioned David Frum’s Trumpocracy as an example, with its less than thrilling subtitle ‘The Corruption of the American ...”

“... metaphor, deployed as the Volunteer is leaving the ‘broad brown murk’ of the Humber – ‘To north and south, a scanty shoreline welds the rusted steel of estuary and sky’ – welds the supposed opposites of nature and industry (and the rust is a reminder that industry is not immune to nature, that the destructive effects work in both directions). Also ...”

“... servants – appears as well in her view of Bishop at Harvard. ‘In the second fall at Harvard, Elizabeth began to see and take her place on the enormous, conservative, sexist campus.’ This is merely funny, since Harvard has no ‘campus’ to speak of, and since one could more truly say: ‘began to take her place in the congenial literary, liberal ...”

“... confirmed that it provided no ‘automaticity’. Blair didn’t want to hear about any of this. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the deputy Foreign Office legal adviser, resigned; her boss, Michael Wood, stoically remained in place and subsequently received a knighthood. Unusually, the holders of the Oxbridge chairs in international law, James Crawford and Vaughan ...”

“... bracelet is ‘as exotic as a silk dress on a cliff face, Audrey Hepburn, somehow, en route to the North Pole’. It was made in the Bronze Age, a period in which, according to Nicolson, ‘the human person is glorified and with his egotism comes his guilt. He carries remarkable weapons. He wears jewellery. His body becomes the arena of his glory.’ Nicolson ...”

“... marked by close attention to the customs and rhythms of life in the upper eastern corner of the North American continent, and showed an almost scholarly regard for local folkways and idioms of speech. Heart Songs and Postcards were set in gritty, impoverished pockets of Proulx’s native Vermont. The Shipping News was infused with the foggy chill of ...”

“... how Old Testament language about the various ‘covenants’ between God and man contributed to North American exceptionalism. He will have to work hard to understand how Lutherans differed from other Protestants in their understanding of what happens in the Eucharist, and how both Lutherans and those other more advanced Protestants (the ...”

“... the wife’s romance with one British officer and her scrambles up the pyramids with another; the North African desert; Alexandria, Luxor, Damascus. The series, combined with some well-timed Virago reissues, was crucial in bringing Manning’s work a wider readership. A quarter of a century after her death, Neville and June Braybrooke’s Olivia Manning: A ...”

“... parish of Mountnessing in Essex in 1575, Archer grew up in a time of intense religious unease, as Elizabeth I and her ministers strove to define Protestant orthodoxy and impose it on the English people. Far from unifying the nation, the 1558 Act of Uniformity hardened divisions between Catholic diehards and Calvinist reformers, who themselves split into ...”

“... poll. Meanwhile, the economy is booming, Iran has chosen not to strike back, or not quite yet, and North Korea isn’t making menacing noises. ‘America is back!’ Ubu brayed. Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, and our Congresswoman, theatrically tore up her copy of Ubu’s speech.Even before the Iowa vote was finalised, it was clear that Biden’s performance ...”

“... the triple-decker cake with the solitary little sugar bride on top – for his description of Elizabeth Bishop: she is ‘the poets’ poets’ poet’. It sounds farcical, but it’s strictly true, and there’s as little getting round it as there is improving on it. As I begin, therefore, I feel stirrings of a wholly impersonal desire maybe to pan ...”

“... in Higginbotham’s biography, which is less detailed, but serious and judicious. Based in North Carolina, Higginbotham is a lawyer by background and has written several historical novels, spanning different eras. Through her website she keeps lively links with readers and writers. She is a close student of the sources, and careful not to stuff her ...”

“... winds and towering seas that scattered the fleet, driving them far to the south. The Hind and the Elizabeth reached the western end of the Strait again nearly a month later, but the next day the Elizabeth was driven back into it. She eventually sailed for home and the Hind carried on alone, on an uninterrupted and ...”