“... came from what might be called indirect patronage, such as the sale of proofs and manuscripts to John Quinn, the New York lawyer and patron whose interest had been sparked by Pound. Even the advances and royalties that Joyce received from the Egoist and its book-publishing wing were not the result of profits: Weaver subsidised both operations, and when she ...”

“... Iran. In addition to the CIA estimates, Richelson relies primarily on standard works – John W. Lewis and Xue Litai’s China Builds the Bomb (1988), George Perkovich’s India’s Nuclear Bomb (1999), Seymour Hersh’s The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (1991) – which he supplements with memoirs and ...”

“... family imploded. Her mother fell ill with TB, her father delegated home life to the 14-year-old John and chaos ensued. In some ways it was liberating, as Boty recalled in the long interview she gave in 1965 to Nell Dunn for her book Talking to Women. With her mother in hospital or at home bedridden there was ‘a fantastic amount of freedom’, but there ...”

“... social group, lies over north Norfolk. Eleven miles to the north of Agnew’s house is Holkham Hall, where Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, still owns farmland on the scale of his eponymous Georgian ancestor, the agricultural reformer Coke of Norfolk. Last year the Holkham Farming Company received £183,000 in subsidies; another Holkham enterprise, Holkham ...”

“... with Cameron’s description of this as a ‘slight fall’. After the letters were published, John McDonnell hailed the prime minister as a convert to the anti-austerity cause. The unedifying spectacle of a prime minister ignorant of the impact of his own government’s policies, or so taken in by his ministers’ rhetoric that he could not reconcile ...”

“... have descended on us. Their hoofbeats are still ringing in our ears.’ Three months later John Dos Passos reported in Life magazine that the Americans were ‘losing the victory in Europe’. Visiting Germany as an army journalist, he found that Europeans, ‘friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are ...”

“... series of highlights (Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, 1842-46), they were savaged by John Wilson Croker in the Tory Quarterly Review. Hatchet jobs were Croker’s speciality: it was his review of Endymion that Byron joked was the cause of Keats’s death in Don Juan (‘’Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,/Should let itself be ...”

“... and Boon’ was right up my street. Raphael was there, sitting on the floor in the packed main hall of Ruskin College where he taught adult students, amid dozens of historians from both inside and outside the university. He looked like the eternal student himself in jeans and bomber jacket, long hair flopping over his eyes as he smoked a roll-up. ‘A bit ...”

“... ways of thinking, including – or maybe especially – Labour home secretaries. Blunkett and John Reid certainly did. But Theresa May’s long tenure (six years) and apparent comfort at the Home Office suggests that the mindset may have deepened in her case or meshed better with her pre-existing worldview. This includes a powerful resentment towards the ...”

“... A.E.W. Mason, who had been a Liberal MP, was a secret agent in Morocco, Spain and Mexico; Hall Caine, whose new novels were given full-page advertisements, was engaged in Allied propaganda in America; E. Phillips Oppenheim conducted neutral journalists round the Western Front; Baroness Orczy founded a women’s Active Service League to hound ...”

“... lighter in tonality, distinctly medieval in mood. Wycliffe reading his translation of the Bible to John of Gaunt, Chaucer and Gower present was started in 1847, a year before the foundation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Nevertheless it has the feel of a Pre-Raphaelite picture. Brown was never a member of the Brotherhood. But his steadfast professionalism ...”

“... from the glaze in beholders’ eyes. Searching for the ‘real’ one is like chasing quarry in a hall of mirrors. In this delusive environment, Flint is an admirable Ariadne, who guides us close to the source of the reflections. She unwinds three distinct threads. First, she exhibits Columbus’s reading and map-reading. She scours the margins of his ...”

“... to feel confident about their loyalty when we came before Mr Scullion, the chief lion at the gym hall. Not a bit of it. No sooner had Scullion given some Kenny Dalglish-in-the-making the chance of picking a football team than all affection and loyalty would fall away like snow off a dyke. First lesson: let nothing stand in the way of winning. My ...”

“... box (or Rubik’s Cube). The three barbicans that command the points of the V are House of Fraser, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer. There is an upper and a lower mall. The temperature is unnatural; so temperate that it drives you mad. You can’t sweat. You’re blow-dried. You can’t breathe. Air is recycled as in an airliner. You’re supposed to make those ...”

“... effort of honesty and rationality seems to be needed – but the problem is so fantasy-ridden. John Updike’s story ‘Transaction’ in his latest book of short stories shows the prostitution bargain from the side of the male partner: his confusion about her blank availability and boredom, his attempts both to reach her as a real person and to use her in ...”