“... ways. Edna Waugh had been spotted at the age of 14 by a friend of her father, a barrister called William Clarke Hall, who urged him to send her to art school. By the time she was 16 Hall was ‘determined’ to marry her and she and Ida were in fraught correspondence about what to do. Ida sensibly argued with both parties that Edna was simply too young to ...”

“... out of complacency, and more alert to the suffering of others. Molesworth had been taught by William Gaskell, the Unitarian minister and husband of Elizabeth Gaskell, who was another accomplished practitioner of supernatural fiction. Gaskell’s ghost stories, more ambitious and substantial than Molesworth’s (try her unforgettable ‘Old Nurse’s ...”

“... with the weight of material and social success. The flights on Concorde, the Porsche, the ‘this white burgundy comes from Mick’ (from Julian Barnes’s diary). He records meeting, in the same week, Princess Margaret, Ionesco and David Hockney. David Bowie offers to take over a part in The Real Thing; the Duchess of Devonshire appears as ‘Debo’ on page ...”

“... or anything composed in a language other than English, or by anyone who wasn’t a white man. He had as little time for science fiction that didn’t follow his own strict prescriptions as he did for ‘so-called mainstream fiction’ – a category that he seems to have defined in contrast to science fiction, on the one hand, and the work of ...”

“... the circumstances, unavoidable.The Smiths were a family of significance. Bodichon’s grandfather William inherited a great wholesale grocery business, and in the 1780s and 1790s bought himself social and political status. The family home in Clapham was exchanged for a magnificent town house by Hyde Park and two hundred acres in Essex. He acquired Old Masters ...”

“... the reader through the public furores – the outcry over her 1966 pronouncement that ‘the white race is the cancer of human history,’ for example, used as a cudgel against her by conservative foes until their arms went numb – and developments in her personal life familiar from previous biographies, memoirs and profiles. While not stinting on ...”

“... were as real to him as Joan of Arc’s voices, Blake’s angels or Elwood P. Dowd’s giant white rabbit, Harvey. Trollope’s obsession about his characters originates in the kind of trauma that classically deranges sensitive minds. His wretchedness as a schoolboy is famous from the extended descriptions of it in An Autobiography. He uses terms like ...”

“... among the most famous photographs ever taken. So stark is the contrast between Aldrin in his white spacesuit and the empty grey desert he stands on – the black of space beyond, the sun out of sight – that while it is, obviously, a photograph of a man on the moon it is also a picture of the living and the dead. For Armstrong, who always saw things ...”

“... people possessed an essence and genius different from, and even superior to, that of Europeans or white people. This view was mocked by some African artists, intellectuals and political rivals. ‘A tiger doesn’t proclaim his tigritude,’ Wole Soyinka said. ‘He pounces.’ But négritude was the animating spirit of Fesman, which was a huge ...”

“... get briefly adopted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The man who started this frivolous auction was William Safire, former speechwriter to Richard Nixon and now columnist for the New York Times. He it was who, during the dismal days of the Jimmy Carter Presidency, came up with ‘Koreagate’, ‘Peanutgate’, ‘Billygate’ and – his own ...”

“... they don’t take seriously. ‘The ideology of the manosphere may be particularly attractive to white, heterosexual men because it appeals to and reinforces their sense of aggrieved entitlement,’ Kennedy-Kollar writes. ‘Their dissatisfaction and anger stem, ultimately, from the feeling that they are being denied something to which they are ...”

“... of the title derives from Berryman’s witty Englishing of his name to Aldous Huxley, from William Bradford to W.H. Auden, have discovered in America an unformulated open space hospitably ready to accommodate their private myths of self-realisation. To less determined or less visionary immigrants it offers a wide variety of ready-made life-styles, and ...”

“... Of this sea-shore. Coldly the wind claws me But a burning light snakes along the windows And white mica of cliffs Glitters in that glare. Bank Holiday ... It brings back the long wave Of my own life, Creeping and sliding, sluggish up the slope. It’s getting late. The brassy noise balloons And sags to silence. There come now on their wheelchairs the ...”

“... she needed to. In addition to the stories and novels she wrote poetry, and a biography of T.H. White. She also translated Proust’s Contre Sainte-Beuve, was a devoted correspondent, and kept a diary running to 38 volumes. More surprisingly, she was a musicologist of considerable importance, as well as a knowledgeable gardener and a resourceful cook. Since ...”

“... paint Which flies in dollops like wet chamois leathers Whilst air-burst cardboard shells disgorge white feathers. My own view is we ought to go ahead Even though press support brings only shame. But my view’s that of one with a warm bed While others face the shrapnel and the flame. What can you do except note with due dread The other side in this case are ...”