“... the war, by publishing her in Les Temps modernes and writing a preface for her novel Portrait of a Man Unknown (1948). (The war between antediluvian existentialists and cool modernists had not yet started.) Without the advent of the ‘new novel’ in the 1950s, Sarraute’s career might not have taken off at all. But it did take off, and towards the end of ...”

“... policy shall get loose, not only to our embarrassment, but to yours also.’ Gamlin was a company man and he clearly got the point. ‘In spite of the desire voiced by some of the children who wrote,’ Gamlin replied, ‘I have no intention of using any material by the above author, as I think I mentioned to you after I had first approached her without ...”

“... chairman of the local council, who lives next door to my friend Steve. The chairman is a gaunt man with a heavy moustache that gives him a doleful, hangdog look. He lives in a neat, detached, over-decorated home on a small estate. We go into the living-room. On the occasional table where I set up my tape recorder there are Hummel ornaments and photographs ...”

“... south of the Potomac that Peter Matthiessen met James Jesus Angleton, ‘a cadaverous, hawk-boned man with dark hair, large elfin ears and a lively intelligent face behind horn-rimmed glasses’, as Matthiessen later described him in an unpublished account of his recruitment to the CIA in the autumn of 1950. They had a ‘pleasant talk’. In True Nature, his ...”

“... time of year . . . I was being played like a pipe organ, and with all the stops pulled out: Cor de nuit, Hautbois, Voix humaine. The back door was open. I walked in. Nothing had really changed. I felt like one of those characters in a Dutch painting, ‘the old burgher’s son’, returning to the canvas out of which I’d strayed for a time, having lost my ...”

“... Journal of the International Society for Research on Aggression, introduces a review of Frans de Waal’s Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape somewhat apologetically: ‘Although most of this journal is devoted to papers on aggressive behaviour and violence, it is worth remembering that its mandate also includes the study of peaceable alternatives.’ A ‘tragic ...”

“... intellectuals who have made it,’ he wrote. And no one was busting his buttons more than the man at the top of Commentary’s masthead. That evening proved to be a preview of coming attractions, an ethos in embryo. Four years later, Norman Podhoretz published a memoir entitled, yes, Making It, a book that would live in notoriety, which at least beats ...”

“... which more anon). But I have neither the ambition nor the talent to be a serious chronicler de nos jours. The only time in my life I tried to do a Boswell was after an evening on which Elias Canetti had unexpectedly invited himself to supper with us alone. But when, the following morning, I looked through the notes of his conversation which I’d made ...”

“... eventual reduction in mind. He is equally critical of the anthropocentric fallacy which makes of man the measure of the universe and the goal of the evolutionary process. He therefore parts company with those architects of theistic evolution, such as Teilhard de Chardin, for whom the branches of the evolutionary tree point ...”

“... be barely noticeable: they wouldn’t register as a subject. The poets Michael Symmons Roberts and Paul Farley published a book in 2011 called Edgelands, including chapters titled ‘Cars’, ‘Paths’, ‘Dens’, ‘Containers’, ‘Landfill’, ‘Sewage’, ‘Wire’; but this was a series of essays, championing the overlooked at unnecessary ...”

“... successors to the Communist Party, which had been dissolved in 1991. By that time, a dapper young man, Gianfranco Fini, had replaced Almirante as leader of the MSI. Fini promised to rejuvenate ‘fascism for the year 2000’, which didn’t stop Berlusconi from endorsing him when he ran for mayor of Rome in 1993. This was the first and, in ...”

“... and religious and mental anguish – to a bookseller whose very name, Lew D. Feldman (lewd fell man, like the fell fiend), was an insult to someone like Spark who had a lifelong interest in anagrams and wordplay. She joked after the sale (again laughing off the pain of life) that ‘some old professor is probably drivelling over them at the moment.’ (I do ...”

“... incendiary pronouncements of 19th-century French reactionaries such as Louis Veuillot and Joseph de Maistre (for example, sovereignty ‘is always one, inviolable and absolute’). Above all, he started to discuss his ultimate preference for Catholic integralism: a subordination of the state to the Church. He proposed various authoritarian schemes, always ...”

“... which had finally come out from an American university press. He did not look like a 70-year-old man. He was tall, his frame was thin but strong, his hair was grey in a crew cut. His accent sounded foreign. His position that night was that of outlaw, of someone who spoke dark and difficult truths which were not acceptable to those who controlled ...”

“... I take advantage of her inattention and quiz Blakey under my breath: Do you think I look like a MAN? B. gives me an appraising glance but is non-committal. Then everything lands on our table in a steaming, salsa-drenched pile: guacamole, sour cream and chicken tostadas in huge encephalitic, butterfly-shaped tortillas – nacho chips on steroids – and a ...”