“... influence of a good smoke on the writing capacities of Virginia Woolf, Christopher Isherwood, George Orwell and Compton Mackenzie, he poses the large question whether ‘with abstainers multiplying, we may soon have to ask whether literature is going to become impossible – or has already begun to be impossible.’ It’s increasingly obvious, as one ...”

“... Bell’s caveat reminded me of being in Toronto once on litbiz and running into an exhausted Michael Holroyd, then world-touring the third volume of his Bernard Shaw biography. He explained his travails with a resigned good humour: ‘They keep asking me if I still like Shaw. It’s … it’s … irrelevant.’ Even so, Van Gogh’s is an intense ...”

“... whole world,’ according to the Victoria County History. Assessing the poetry of the Suffolk poet George Crabbe in The Spirit of the Age, Hazlitt wrote: There are here no ornaments, no flights of fancy, no illusions of sentiment, no tinsel of words. His song is one sad reality, one unraised, unvaried note of unavailing woe. Literal fidelity serves him in the ...”

“... hidden in America’s plain sight, and fantastic tales that overstep the limits of credibility (Michael Rogin wrote of his ‘magical dystopian projections’ in a review of Ecology of Fear in the LRB, 19 August 1999). Dead Cities is so fierce and unsettling, one wonders whether Davis believes that a few ‘great comets’ will be necessary to ‘renew the ...”

“... the components was Streptococcus regius, so called because it had been grown from pus taken from George V’s chest. All the staphylococcal vaccines from St Mary’s were useless. But they brought an antimicrobial benefit: the profits from their sale funded the department where Fleming worked and where he discovered penicillin.In evolutionary time MRSA are ...”

“... was based on an underestimation of his seriousness: according to the present-day Guardian critic Michael Billington, Coward’s exploration of ‘the thin dividing line between sex and savagery’ in Private Lives puts him on a par with Strindberg. A rather different reassessment is provided by Dan Rebellato, whose revisionist deconstruction of the Osborne ...”

“... comrades,’ he demanded of the 1960 Labour Party Conference, ‘that Mr Khrushchev is not the George Lansbury type?’ At another level, it was the subtlety and sophistication of Healey’s approach to defence that made the difference. He had acquired an expertise about modern weapons systems which gave him authority in arguments about matching strategic ...”

“... primed to scan his new novels for glimpses of earlier characters. Brooklyn features a vignette of Michael Redmond, the schoolteacher father of Eamon in The Heather Blazing. There is also a reference to Eamon himself: ‘He’s studying, I’d say. That’s what he usually does.’ Later in the novel, we recognise yet another character from The Heather ...”

“... the government at 96 per cent. So, in the words of Mark McKinnon, a former political adviser to George W. Bush, ‘Romney’s comment managed to offend just about everyone in America.’ No it didn’t. The 96 per cent don’t think in one mind about anything. Many of the 47 per cent will self-identify with the 53 per cent. Many of the 53 per cent will ...”

“... James Cagney had his moments of deadpan nastiness, but there’s the mother thing. Perhaps George Raft came close, but I suspect that’s more the result of moribund acting. There isn’t any doubt about Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (one of the few good films I wish I’d never seen): as blank ...”

“... Paul, called her Doke. Childhood friends called her Dodo or Didi or Priscilla Preoccupied. Michael Curtiz called her Miss Lachrymose (she could weep on cue). Jack Carson called her Zelda. Fans called her Miss Huckleberry Finn. Film crews called her Nora Neat and Dorothy Detail. A staff assistant called her Janie O. Gene Kelly called her Brunhilda. Bob ...”

“... Many Hollywood stars, for example, attend AA, but you won’t find yourself sitting next to Michael Douglas unless you happen to be in the industry and making seven-figure alimony payments. There is no copyright on the 12-step formula and any number of look-alike therapies have borrowed it: Al-Anon, Al-Ateen, Chocanon, MA (Marijuana Anonymous), Weight ...”

“... in mathematical physics. Here Cohen has enlisted colleagues such as the particle physicist Michael Nauenberg, who remarks on Newton’s use of graphical methods, while a jet engineer and philosopher of science, George Smith, gives us his views on Newton’s theories of the Moon’s motion and the mutual attraction of ...”

“... memoirs, and almost completely messed it up. At one stage an experienced literary agent, George Greenfield, was brought in to advise, but found himself ‘constantly interrupted by Mrs Thatcher . . . who fixed him with a blank, self-absorbed stare. “The extent of her ill-conceived ignorance at that time was only matched by the brazen vigour with ...”

“... troops to fight side by side might undermine settler colonial segregation, but relented after King George V intervened.) As Allied losses mounted, the colonial contribution came to seem increasingly important: Major Darnley Stuart-Stephens called for a ‘Million Black Army’. Churchill lent his support, fearing a verdict from ‘historians of the ...”