“... with an interest in these areas, the East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company, showed little interest in exploring them: a sign perhaps that existing trade routes had already determined the shape and, ultimately, the extent of Britain’s Empire, and that even the wildest imaginings of geographers could not make its ventures more ...”

“... what to do with all those years of obscurity. Ross’s major predecessor as a Sterne biographer, Arthur Cash, coped with the difficulty by writing, in effect, two books. The first volume, Laurence Sterne: The Early and Middle Years, was published in 1975 and left Sterne in 1760, on the road from York to London, hurrying to embrace his literary destiny. We ...”

“... seems likely that Miracles of Life will be Ballard’s last book. In the brief concluding chapter, little more than a page long, he says that in June 2006 he was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. He made the decision to write his autobiography early in 2007, and finished the book in September. He has always worked ...”

“... epicene GG poses topless in sneakers and tennis shorts, a sweater around her neck and an adorable little white beret perched stylishly on her head. She’s brown, louche and Amazonian, and more distressingly beautiful than in any official studio publicity shot I have ever seen. O, for such beings to play ping-pong with! When the book came out, Garbo never ...”

“... Seberg; Jovovich. The fame of Joan of Arc began in her lifetime and, though it has dipped a little now and then, she has never vanished from view. Her image acts as a magic mirror of personal and political idealism and, in particular, of changing ideas about women’s heroism. She has proved an inexhaustible source of inspiration for ...”

“... and real vents can be just as mixed up as fictional ones. When the English entertainer Arthur Prince died in 1948, his jolly partner Jim was interred with him, and they were joined in their grave shortly afterwards by their grieving vent-widow. In the 1950s, an Australian singer who used to appear on stage with her vent-husband Herbert Dexter found ...”

“... In the final pages of Storey’s This Sporting Life (1960), battered rugby league player Arthur Machin makes what may or may not be his final appearance on the pitch. Knowing that for him the ‘game’ (in more than a sporting sense) is up, he looks beyond its claustrophobic mayhem at the ‘life’ not yet ‘absorbed’ into it: at ‘the tops of ...”

“... letters in order, I come across a diary for 1956-59. It’s depressing to read as very little of it is factual and most of it to do with my slightly sickening obsession with, coupled with a lack of insight into, my own character. It’s full of embarrassing resolutions about future conduct and exhortations to myself to do better. Love is treated ...”

“... Conrad had written to him. Conrad had based Heart of Darkness on his impressions – he had very little hard, detailed evidence – but, in any case, he did not want to get involved. He wrote to his friend R.B. Cunninghame Graham: He is a Protestant Irishman, pious too. But so was Pizarro. For the rest I can assure you that he is a limpid personality. There ...”

“... imperious. An art critic’s eyes. Rakish eyes. Pharmacopoeia eyes. His face is mask-like, giving little or nothing away. Bored, cigar-smoking, distrait. He could be lost in reverie, or just bored to tears. Charles Baudelaire might be one of the first great poseurs of our time – a not inconsiderable legacy. As with similar images of Baudelaire by Nadar and ...”

“... one of Sayers, from Gaudy Night: Harriet was glad that in these days she could afford her own little car. Her entry into Oxford would bear no resemblance to those earlier arrivals by train. For a few hours longer she could ignore the whimpering ghost of her dead youth and tell herself that she was a stranger and a sojourner, a well-to-do woman with a ...”

“... but how many other films of the period 1907-9 are congenial to modern taste? It seems a little quixotic to expect higher standards of artistic achievement from films that happen to have disabled characters in them. There is the occasional whiff of good intention even in early films, but the results seldom tickle Norden’s nostril. Deaf Mute Girl ...”

“... of hand-tinted, framed family photos: Pancho as a baby, Pancho as a teenager with his mother and a little girl, his daughter Eileen, who lives in El Paso with her mother. Their arms and legs are covered with abscesses, and they are running out of veins – the ‘black tar’ has hardened and blackened one after the other. Pancho and his friend Jaime lower ...”

“... speeches. Afternoon Off has several, because the leading figure is a Chinese waiter with very little English so everybody talks at him. 13 February. As with Havel once, I seem to be the only playwright not personally acquainted with the deceased Arthur Miller and with some line on his life and work. Many of his plays I ...”

“... that we are bound by our social origins to what he calls aesthetic dispositions and have little power to choose otherwise.Denise is a perfect example of Bourdieu’s thesis. As she grows up, she becomes alienated from what Ernaux calls ‘the real’. Or rather, the real of her childhood disappears under the onslaught of the real of school, for which ...”