“... Even the Shah smelled a rat and turned it down. (I wonder what title Weidenfeld had in mind – White Star over Iran? Star in the East?) Having already been lumbered with the Shah’s massively counter-productive work, Towards the Great Civilisation, Radji could spot the Chalfont-Kim Il Sung shoot-self-in-foot syndrome and hastened to Ashraf’s side. He ...”

“... these days. A candidate who lacks basic qualifications (and hence could not present himself in a white toga) is a ‘nigrate’. The Maltese censors who finally allow Toomey his copy of Thomas Campion’s poems confuse the poet with the English martyr Edmund Campion. (Some autobiography there, I believe.) ‘Richardtionary’ is the polite homosexual term ...”

“... is sufficiently good-humoured and various to accommodate a pleasingly disgusting horror story, ‘White Lies’, and a disarming comedy, ‘Algebra’, about a gentle homosexual who, to his own surprise, takes literary London by storm simply through flattering famous writers and inviting them round for little social evenings. If Theroux has a weakness, it is ...”

“... though not always as successful. I find it hard to enjoy the florid extravagances of Patrick White’s Voss, while respecting the attempt to make word match fact. Xavier Herbert tried to meet size with size, insisting that his Poor Fellow My Country, close on a million words, be published in a single hardback volume which one day may kill a frail reader ...”

“... of around twenty thousand laboured on the island’s plantations; there were between 1500 and 2000 white residents, including plantation owners, government officials, priests, doctors, craftsmen and police. At the time of Hans Jonathan’s birth, his mother, Emilia Regina, was a slave in the household of Henrietta Cathrina and her husband, Ludvig Heinrich ...”

“... of Hertford in rooms upholstered and draped and carpeted in ‘flesh pink’, crimson, scarlet and white, with contrasting black-patinated bronzes. By chance an inventory of the contents of Lord Hertford’s villa in Regent’s Park survives which closely corresponds, although without the alarming carnal epithet. Other sources confirm his account of the ...”

“... of coverage.’ In Regent’s Park rows of old ladies were sitting in the rose garden. In their white skirts and sandals, they had an air of seen-it-all about them, pointing to beds of flowers and thinking nothing of cellophane. And maybe they had seen it all: by the boating pond, fixed to the bandstand, was a plaque engraved with yet more London ...”

“... Cakes of Gooseberry Lady Barrington’s Way’, or ‘Lady Arundel’s Manchet’ (manchet is white bread made from fine flour). But there is a complicated relationship with social hierarchy here: alongside these over-the-shoulder forms of aristocratic verification jostles a commitment to distribution – a paradox caught neatly in Partridge’s recipe ...”

“... over time, it’s important that they don’t change too much while they’re in there. A large white loaf (unsliced) needs to weigh between 750 and 800 grams to be judged comparable to others that have gone before. Jars of peanut butter must be 225-300g (but the container doesn’t have to be a jar). Not any cut flowers, but carnations on the stem. Bras ...”

“... out the tests on Josephine he and I chatted about the great days of Charlie Cooke, David Webb and Peter Osgood. He told me it was already too late to try AZT and 3TC on Josephine but he was cautiously hopeful. ‘To get Aids there has to be mixing of blood, which means there has to be a break in the skin or an open sore due to some other sexually transmitted ...”

“... after the election, Aaron Sorkin’s rant on the Vanity Fair website: ‘The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons … misogynistic shitheads everywhere … If he does manage to be a douche nozzle without breaking the law for four years, we’ll make it through those four years.’ Or consider the message read out to Vice ...”

“... comic cameo as himself, with an especially lyrical passage about Terry Butcher: We have very white hot nights, the tension is white hot, the hysteria, the volatile, hostile atmosphere away from home – you can come up and feel it and you think, fucking hell ... You have to have players who can walk out of the ...”

“... of £95.85 a week, since they are deemed to be ‘self-employed’.I was drafting a defence for Peter Ojo, a disabled man in his late fifties. His was another bedroom tax case. He tries to meet his rent by making up the shortfall with money from other benefits, and relies on food banks. He has kept his rent arrears under £2000 despite all sorts of ...”

“... on broken stone tracery is a common motif; dark interiors provide a foil for stained glass and for white satin and deep blue velvet. The men must be away on the crusades. Young women are sobbing beside tombs or seated in Gothic cloisters. Most are dressed in the style of 1280, but some in that of 1820, and there are numerous attractive young nuns in timeless ...”

“... to know Laura in the first place? He made her a complilation tape, of course (‘you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music’ etc etc etc). He put together for her, in other words, a favourite-things list made flesh. It is probably this that will turn out ...”