“... the horrors of the inter-war years. One good example of this genre is the trilogy written by Hans Peter Richter: Friedrich, I was there and The Time of the Young Soldiers. Here, little is spared the reader by way of scenes depicting Jew-baiting, political thuggery and human degradation. With a past like this, it is not surprising that German writers do not ...”

“... port. Some of his delicacies are listed by Rosamond Richardson, who regards fat hen (alias white goosefoot, alias dirty dick, alias pigweed, alias mutton tops) as ‘the most enlightening discovery of all my forays into the hedgerows’. It is full of protein, distinguished in flavour and one can bring it home by the armful: in short, ‘a sensational ...”

“... just because they are so laughable – the viewpoint of Wodehouse, Waugh, Nancy Mitford and Peter Simple. The term ‘novelty’, which now gets translated as ‘trendy’ or ‘fashionable’, becomes a dirty word. ‘Feeling profound or vehement’ is reserved for those who wish to change society – for Tony Benn, the ‘Race Relations ...”

“... 2). One important development illustrates nicely that odd relationship between guide and history. Peter Cunningham had followed his guide to Westminster Abbey of 1842 with a two-volume historical Handbook of London, which went through two editions in 1849-1850. It was an outstanding work and H.B. Wheatley based his London Past and Present on it in ...”

“... feels, is altogether too old and she did not share his belief that if Reagan could make it to the White House he could do the same. She adds the surprising comment that he is more suited to the trench warfare of Fleet Street than to the battle-lines of politics. In her view, demobilisation loomed. Roy Jenkins is capable of generous and spontaneous ...”

“... During the course of the next week, I was to make several similar errors. Names like Patrick White and A.D. Hope were greeted with candid derision, and nobody had heard of Clive James.* When, at one of the actual Festival’s talk-ins, I said that it was odd to find Peter Porter missing from various standard ...”

“... the pub-going tart with a heart, ‘cocking her hat at a better angle in a mirror which advertised White Horse’. All this was probably a complete waste of time. The Guardian had talked of Christopher having a girl, and said the police wanted to contact her. ‘They have still not spoken to a girlfriend he was believed to have had in Blackpool.’ On the ...”

“... National Servicemen in their time. With Nexus, Virgin Publishing inherited a couple of editors, Peter Darvill-Evans and Kerri Sharp, who had the wit to see that there was an untapped market for ‘erotic fiction written by women for women’ – Femporn. Since John Cleland, men have written pornography for men under female pseudonyms: a tradition which had ...”

“... sunlight at an elegant (looted) walnut table sits a Japanese officer, in a uniform jacket with a white open-necked shirt. Alan remembers the grenade in his pocket and pulls it out to throw. A startled sentry wakes up and shoots at him; the bullet goes through his shoulder. The grenade drops and rolls a few feet. As he scrabbles to pick it up and throw it ...”

“... hoax biography Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-60. The book even included a small black and white photograph, captioned ‘Logan Mountstuart, 1959’, that showed a round-faced, faintly-smiling man with abbreviated eyebrows and incipient jowls. Boyd described him as a curious and forgotten figure in the annals of 20th-century literary life. ‘A man of ...”

“... been deceived into by undercover officers. Many more would follow.In 2013, one former SDS officer, Peter Francis, spoke publicly about the unit’s role in spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager murdered by a gang of white youths in 1993, a fact that had not been disclosed to the Macpherson Inquiry into ...”

“... and Gordon Brown made much more use of the practice of outside appointments, with Brown appointing Peter Mandelson in 2008 as secretary of state for business and then in 2009 as ‘first secretary of state’, a title that was chosen instead of deputy prime minister because he sat in the House of Lords not the Commons.In a report published in 2010, the House ...”

“... to the Terror through the wall’ was altogether too much to bear. This slender, black-on-white, slip-in-the-pocket City Lights reprint, gripped in the paws of the future military élite, looks like the all-American equivalent of The Little Red Book for the uniformed warriors of free-market capitalism. Are they being inoculated against the viruses of ...”

“... members and Red Army men, her poem-cycle The Demesne of the Swans, a passionate elegy for the White Guards. Faced with such irresponsible independence, the kinds of cultural commissar who turned their heavy guns on Akhmatova, and denounced her as a nun and whore, could only shrug their shoulders. What could they have made of Tsvetaeva’s ironic but also ...”

“... sign, in wartime, rude at all. These Vs are all the versuses of life from LEEDS v. DERBY, Black/White and (as I’ve known to my cost) man v. wife, Communist v. Fascist, Left v. Right, class v. class as bitter as before, the unending violence of US and THEM, personified in 1984 by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM, Hindu/Sikh, soul/body, heart ...”