“... and a date: 1633. This was the year a local gentleman, Sir John Reresby of Thrybergh Hall, began to note the contents of his garden. Every peach, pear and plum is catalogued, as are herbs, shrubs, bulbs – ‘Kentish Codlings’, ‘the Granado Gilliflower’, ‘Melincholly Munkes hoode’ – and attempts at grafting ...”

“... of US-Soviet relations, complete with a speech by Olivia de Havilland … The next day, John Wayne learns that the Selective Service board has extended his 3-A deferment. Hot dog! The star celebrates Thanksgiving Day by carving turkeys at the canteen, even as Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin meet in Tehran to plan the US invasion of Europe. The ...”

“... had actually braved their father’s displeasure, and become an Anglican parson. After chiding John for pushing himself into the forefront of all their mother’s obituaries he has a swipe at his famous brother’s double standards: When I recall Father’s intense dislike of the Church of England and of the English public schools, and your professed ...”

“... job and let it take the blame for your next book? Cecil Day Lewis’s predecessor as Laureate was John Masefield, who held the post for nearly forty years without seeming to know, or greatly care, what was required of him. Masefield was in place for so long that, by the time he died, most people had forgotten that we had a Poet Laureate. Every so often, he ...”

“... business interests back home in Italy. Irritated messages keep arriving from Viareggio and points north, urging Carla to sort herself out. Which is what she would like to do anyway: but her son Maurizio doesn’t help, especially when he gangs up with the daughter of a feckless hippie ménage across the way. Carla’s other neighbours are equally ...”

“... over the past decade, and a selection, entitled Severe Joy, is listed for publication next year by John Calder. They abound in fantastic, and often very funny, descriptions of the people he disapproves of (such as Mrs Thatcher, Enoch Powell, Ian Paisley, the Royal Family and Jesus Christ) engaged in eccentric forms of sexual intercourse. One might almost ...”

“... when cultural imperialism among publishers seems to have demanded the exclusion of Gaelic verse. John MacQueen and Tom Scott, who edited the 1966 Oxford anthology, were aware of the lack of Gaelic and squirm a bit in their Introduction. When Penguin had Tom Scott edit their Scottish anthology (published in 1970) again there was no Gaelic. Recently, Penguin ...”

“... successfully – most recently in a triumphant Broadway True West, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly alternating the two main roles – and last year also saw the publication of the very useful Cambridge Companion to Sam Shepard.* But his later plays have often seemed clotted, hyper-masculine, forced, and his ventures into movie direction – Far ...”

“... a huge corporation, but it specialises in bringing off surprises. In the 1970s, Hunt acquired a North Sea field called Beatrice for $50,000; a few years later it was valued at $500 million. ‘We have a reputation for never squeezing the last nickel out of a deal,’ Hunt has said of his company’s ethos. ‘My grandmother had an expression: “Pigs get ...”

“... Refugees have paid a high price for this decision. They have also paid for the new prestige of the North American social and economic model – unrivalled now, but all the more conspicuous in its failings. The racially diverse society is a deeply troubling notion in Europe. The grinding together and shifting of peoples – the tectonic population movements ...”

“... but as a threat to an indebted nation still embroiled in distant wars, with land borders to north and south that it can’t patrol as effectively as it would like and unemployment hovering at around 9 per cent. The US already has more than 11 million unauthorised migrants. About six and a half million are from Mexico and another two million from other ...”

“... The woods around London offered some curious sights in the 1840s. To the north in Epping Forest the infant William Morris could be seen riding out in a toy suit of armour, while down in Surrey, in the Tillingbourne Valley, little Gertrude Jekyll was learning to make gunpowder. In the event it was Morris who became the political revolutionary and Gertrude Jekyll who withdrew into a secluded world of romance in the house and garden she created at Munstead Wood ...”

“... and Baggit’s psychedelic killing sprees might be seen as an extreme example of this. For the North Vietnamese, in complete contrast, the conflict was the endgame of decades of fighting. As Bao Ninh – who fought in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade of the NVA – makes devastatingly clear in his first novel, the sorrows of war were long a part of the ...”

“... could now afford to turn its attention to Eritrea. Despite more pressing concerns elsewhere, the north-eastern front posed serious problems for the PMAC from the moment it took power. A disastrous Ethiopian campaign in the spring of 1976 was followed by an Eritrean offensive at the end of the year. The Eritreans went on to take all the key towns in the ...”

“... cared about the play. It was Dead-eye Dick, tormented by guilt in Midland City, who had found old John Fortune’s quite pointless death in Katmandu, as far away from his hometown as possible, somehow magnificent. Would we have a novel, then, if there were no authorial guilt to be discharged? The question is a blunt one, and yet it gains in significance if ...”