“... romanticism – traits he detected in many well-regarded writers: Wilde, Ford, Greene, West, even Joyce. How did he square this dislike with his admiration for Proust? He often remarked – it was one of his most characteristic sayings – that with any writer of significance, even the greatest, you always had to put up with something. In the case of ...”

“... but for constantly falling down’. He remembers smoking pot with his mother and her new partner, Joyce, and watching them cry and stroke each other’s hair as they talked about their childhoods. He remembers thinking his father was one of a generation of men who were born to fill out a suit – but he himself was a ‘wastoid’, a nihilist; cycling in and ...”

“... Nor was the father a tyrant; he introduced his son to the works of Hardy and, more surprisingly, Joyce, did not regard jazz as the work of the devil, bought him a subscription to the magazine Downbeat (a signpost here) and also helped him invest in a drum-kit. What if anything he bought his daughter Kitty and what Mrs Larkin thought of it all is not ...”

“... buildings and walkways at the base of the tower. He immediately sent a text message to Laura Johnson, the council’s director of housing, and to Holgate. Once he’d got dressed and gone outside he called Robert Black. The streets were full of people and blue lights were flashing everywhere. Black told him he was behind the police cordon on Whitchurch ...”