“... to prominence, we never learn if Mathias, a travelling watch salesman, has killed the precocious Jacqueline or merely fantasised about doing so: the crime scene, but not his anxious search for an alibi, has been erased from the narrative (‘the abnormal, excessive, suspicious, inexplicable time amounted to forty minutes – if not fifty’). Not only are we ...”

“... 1943. Suzanne was interned until she gave birth to her baby, so that both she and the infant Jacqueline could be deported, on Convoy 57, 18 July 1943. And the others? All were deported with their babies. Like the graves of soldiers ‘Known but to God’, all these ciphers have a haunting quality which is different from that of the identified images, or ...”

“... unpronounceable beginning with a hiss and the name of Sylvester was conferred on him. His wife was Rose Waxman, a sister of two leading Yiddish actors, Maurice and Fanny Waxman, whose roles on the London and New York stages included Hamlet and Medea. My father was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, grew up in Darlington, and always had a slight Northern accent. He ...”