“... 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 ...”

“... sell a recorded million copies. The others, with their appealing titles, were not far behind: The White Ladies of Worcester, The Mistress of Shenstone, The Postern Gate. They were suitable for ‘your daughter’ – innocent, well-written romances, very popular as Sunday school prizes at half-a-crown. They had an unobstrusive religious whiff, more Methodist ...”

“... suddenly, voices are heard, short and longwave sermons. LeBov (there’s an echo in his name of William Labov, pioneer of sociolinguistics, and of the Baal Shem Tov, Master of the Good Name, founder of Eastern Hasidism) believes the key to a cure is to be found in these voices, in their staticky messages that only forest Jews can decode. Samuel, who’d ...”

“... Court Road turnpike during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745: the guards, in their red coats and white spatterdashes, have gathered ahead of the march to Finchley Common. Drunken grenadiers fondle milkmaids and pilfer pies, prostitutes hang out of the windows of the tavern. In the midst of the chaos, a heavily pregnant ballad-seller bids farewell to her ...”

“... of Frances Stonor Saunders’s biography of Sir John Hawkwood (c.1320-94), one-time leader of the White Company made famous by Conan Doyle’s historical novels. The 14th century was indeed an age of opportunity for military adventurers, and for mercenary soldiers in particular. Independent companies, led by seasoned captains, and with their own internal ...”

“... the Welsh poet and editor Keidrych Rhys, at a Poetry London event. (Rhys had been christened William Ronald Rees Jones, but renamed himself after a river near his home.) After their wedding the couple moved to the village of Llanybri; they would divorce a decade later. For a period Roberts found herself living in a caravan with two toddlers in a ...”

“... Feeling, the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick describes its strange and haunting black and white cover photograph as ‘the catalyst that impelled me to assemble the book in its present form’. It depicts a woman clumsily embracing an object that resembles an enormous wasps’ nest made of sticks and twine. The woman’s eyes are shut, and her face is ...”

“... diseases. ‘Know syphilis . . . and all things clinical will be added unto you,’ the great Sir William Osler had said. But it was vital to get things right. Drugs were available, but they were dangerous and expensive. In the untreated, symptoms could disappear quickly, as the organism went to ground, only to re-emerge randomly and unpredictably decades ...”

“... upset perceived dichotomies. He has compared Skippy Dies to the mix of ‘bubblegum pop’ and ‘white noise’ in the Sonic Youth song ‘JC’. For The Mark and the Void (2015), about the relationship between a banker called Claude and an amoral novelist called Paul Murray, he drew on Barthes’s analysis of mythologies and Nietzsche’s idea of ...”

“... disease and a familiar medical axiom held that ‘when the cause ceases, so does the effect.’ William of Auvergne, a 13th-century bishop of Paris, likened the act of confession to vomiting: ‘Just as someone with an upset stomach, straining to expel what is harmful or unsuitable to it, distends his belly and opens his mouth wide to get rid of it’, the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... occasion align with Providence, as it had in the days of Andrew Jackson, the great champion of the white settlers on the frontier. Young Harry read Mark Twain, played the piano and listened to Mozart. He disapproved of boxing, guns and Wagner. Endowed with porch-front charm, he was self-conscious about his ‘girl’s mouth’ and his ‘inordinate desire to ...”

“... advertise and illuminate other writers and artists. Peter Marshall does so in his new biography, William Godwin. Hazlitt’s vivid account of Godwin’s political importance appears on the first page of Marshall’s introduction, and his worthy book is studded with variations on ‘as Hazlitt rightly observed’. He accepts Hazlitt’s judgments as ...”

“... expert sufficiently aware of the intellectual currents to provide Parsons with accurate briefings. William Sullivan, US Ambassador to Iran during the crucial two years of the revolution, seems to have been better-informed in this respect, even if his understanding was superficial. ‘Shariati,’ he says, ‘attempted to reconcile socialism with Islam, and ...”