“... initiating the chapter of uncertainty that coincided with his first letters to Stephen Bann. At no stage in Finlay’s career, however, were the turmoil of the artist and the peace of art necessarily incompatible. As one of his most cited bons mots puts it, a garden is not a retreat but an attack, and the green thoughts he thinks in his version of pastoral ...”

“... had one child, a daughter. So he’s a curious – you could almost say implausible – mix of John McCain and Bill Clinton, though a few decades younger than either of them. According to the conventions of stories about fictional presidents, the novel strives to maintain the appearance of bipartisanship; Duncan never tells us which party he belongs ...”

“... It is​ no surprise that Irish studies has become something of a heavy industry in academia. Ireland is a small nation – ‘an afterthought of Europe’, as James Joyce put it – and marginality is much in vogue at the moment. Yet it is also home to a magnificent body of literature, much of it written with wonderful convenience in the world’s premier language, and so easily accessible from Tokyo to Bogotá ...”

“... her first and second novels, she was asked if she knew the difference between right and wrong. ‘No. Nothing is ever black or white to me, at all.’ After which Dunn asks: ‘But do you have any kind of definite moral code? Like for instance you shouldn’t sleep with married men?’ ‘Not at all, no,’ Quin ...”

“... book too. It has been widely labelled as a semi-autobiographical novel, though in fact there is no such thing. And one reviewer comments approvingly that Esther Freud writes about what she knows; well, let us hope we all do that. Over these disadvantages Hideous Kinky quickly triumphed. It is an impressive performance and not only as a first novel. As a ...”

“... in a protected zone in the midst of the sea which covers the land. But once he thinks ‘there are no such things as unicorns’, the water bursts through. By the end of the poem, he has returned to his usual way of life, and the status of his experience of the Flood is indeterminate: was it vision or delusion? The poem’s echoes of the Bible and of medieval ...”

“... work tearing off the adhesive strips or bringing the numbers to light with the aid of a coin edge. No such task presented itself. Instead a 4000-word letter from Mr John MacArthur introduced me to the world of plate-collecting. Eight million platers can’t be wrong and 450,000 joined the ranks in 1983 alone. Many of them ...”

“... lived a far more public life than most Oxford dons do. So successful was he in this respect that, no doubt to his own pleasure, he was probably not often popularly thought of as an Oxford don. The media have their own not very likeable stereotype of the Oxford don, and Alan clearly didn’t fit that (though, to be fair, Oxford is full of people who do). So he ...”

“... creating a subliminal urge to wash the hands that have been in contact with it. This is an effect no ebook can hope to duplicate. The blurb of Sweet Tooth amplifies the clear genre signals of intrigue and danger sent by the cover image (the back panel shows the same corridor, with the man in a slightly more neutral pose, though the woman has disappeared), and ...”

“... bureaucratically-controlled London Transport to the new, elected Greater London Council. There was no complaint from the Conservative Party. Its two transport frontbenchers in the Commons, up-and-coming young hopefuls called Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine, welcomed the transfer, and specifically stated that this would enable the Council, if it felt ...”

“... were not intended for private viewing: although Hitler and Goebbels had their own television sets, no more than two hundred domestic receivers were ever sold. Instead, Berliners were provided with 11 public viewing rooms in which they could watch the broadcasts, as well as a special ‘telecinema’.By 1936, Berliners were enjoying a change of programme every ...”

“... cases in cinemas, 75 per cent of them male. Women presumably see more blood than men, and men no doubt saw even less of it before they were allowed to be present at births. The late Romanian dictator Ceausescu decreed one of Dracula’s prototypes, Vlad the Impaler, a national hero, while 27 per cent of respondents to an American survey confessed to ...”

“... trope.Then several things happened. The owner of Books and Bookmen, an operator by the name of John Dosse, took the opportunity of emulating the Masada faction and the Goebbelses, and committed suicide himself. I received a moist letter from the editor of the magazine, written in the tone of ‘I hope you’re satisfied now.’ I was accused in print, by ...”

“... precedence. ‘His Lordship affected more aristocracy than befitted his years or the occasion,’ John Galt thought, and Hazlitt agreed: ‘He may affect the principles of equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, upon occasion.’ Gilmour is nearer the mark to see in Byron’s touchiness and bumptiousness not the toff reverting to type, but rather a ...”

“... Man?) good looks made him, too, a valuable commodity at the Caroline Court. This was John Churchill, toy boy of the Duchess of Cleveland, one of Charles II’s discarded mistresses. Churchill, too, was treading a familiar trail: his elder sister was the Duke of York’s concubine. They married secretly, against the wishes of both families, and ...”