“... had made ‘a film for everybody’. The Godfather was an ideal merging of ‘commerce and art’. Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets was ‘a triumph of personal filmmaking’ and a gripping thriller. For Sontag, these films were merely a case of Hollywood ‘plagiarising’ European innovations and rendering them ‘banal’. For Kael, they rejuvenated what ...”

“... to combine form and function, the K2, built out of cast iron to a neoclassical design by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and painted a glossy Post Office red all over, came into service in 1927. It was as much emblem as shelter: ventilation came from holes pierced through the top fascia in the shape of a crown. The smaller and more durable K6, also designed by ...”

“... the Netherlands and, especially, England. Elizabethan voyages of exploration, like that led by Martin Frobisher to search for the Northwest Passage, or Humphrey Gilbert’s ill-fated trip to Newfoundland, made some modest gains (in knowledge if not in wealth). But mostly they conformed to the Spanish and French tragedy ...”

“... an actual dispute about contemporary art was staged at the Tate – defending, Michael Craig-Martin, leading light at Goldsmiths’ College; prosecuting, Hilton Kramer, editor of the New Criterion (it’s telling that there was no obvious British champion on this side). It was made a condition that the speakers should not address each other. Afterwards I ...”

“... on Convoy 69. On page 1043 is a snapshot of two Jewish boys boxing at a sports club at the Saint-Martin-de-Vésubie station in the Alpes-Maritimes; nine other boys crowd around. Only one, Isaac More, bare-chested and wearing short trousers, is identified. (He is shown in a colourful tunic on the tomb picture above the snapshot.) But who are the other ...”

“... of presents for my mother and the cats; numerous bottles of boutique olive oil for Tracy and Gilbert; the melancholy Charlie, small yet dignified in his plastic pet-carrier; piled-up copies of the TLS and World of Interiors; the computer and its many accoutrements; a space cult’s worth of junk food (it’s a ten-hour drive); the Goncourt brothers. I ...”