“... as she was putting on her boots to go out to a point-to-point – if they were both at Birch Grove, Macmillan’s house in Sussex, they would meet for dinner and then go their separate ways. Macmillan remained haunted by the affair. In 1975, he went to see Boothby at his flat and asked, for the sake of his peace of mind, to know the truth one way or ...”

“... who daubed the long-lasting graffiti on a wall running alongside the Tube line between Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park: ‘Same thing day after day – tube – work – dinner – work – tube – armchair – TV – sleep – tube – work – how much more can you take? – one in ten go mad, one in five cracks up.’In an exposé of his art-school ...”

“... to Palestine had fallen for another man, and he was condemned to ‘dirty work’ in an orange grove – what was worse, his boss was an Arab. He soon came down with malaria. ‘I am living alone today,’ he wrote to his father on his twentieth birthday. Yet for all his misery, he refused to join those ‘mummified Jews’ who were running back to ...”

“... over all the drawers in the work table in the spare room. Blakey rolls her eyes, sits down, pulls Richard Rorty out of her bag and prepares to wait for several hours.I guess I left this part out earlier: that I’m as ‘arty’ as my old mum. Can’t help it: it’s a mutant gene, like homosexuality. And though I can neither draw nor paint I’m fairly good ...”

“... water in a blue dress. Another was of Hania, aged two, rolling down a hill of daisies by Ladbroke Grove.In the 15th century, ‘tower’ was another way of naming heaven. But Rania always felt Grenfell Tower was too tall. They were at the top and you could see the Hammersmith and City trains coming in and out of Latimer Road Station. From some of the flats ...”

“... soldiers and working men, often paying for it. The writer James Pope-Hennessy, living in Ladbroke Grove with a former paratrooper called Lenny, loved inviting cabbies back to the flat and asking them what they did in bed: ‘how I adore getting a total stranger to speak freely about sex.’ When he gets out around the pubs or into the major cruising area at ...”