“... for the consultant and they begin an affair; but it is a let-down when she starts to creep to Lloyd Walker, his hideous boss, suggesting a new corporate strategy at a breakfast meeting. And there is a twist in the story when the narrator works late at the office and checks his e-mail: ‘For all my newfound computer skills, formatting, scrolling and ...”

“... Ecstasy on the same plane as evocations of Whistler’s brushwork, Henry James’s prose or Frank Lloyd Wright’s way with a building. This was a sensibility that seemed not to recognise a separation between high and low, past and present, glory and disgrace. The immediate context for the disruption of The Stranger’s Child was that Hollinghurst had given ...”

“... State. ‘When Democracy builds’ was the title of an ardent and prophetic lecture by Frank Lloyd Wright, Ned’s near-contemporary. But, for Lutyens, democratic government could ‘only work through compromise, leaving its conscience in the hands of accountants’. Hospitals, schools, factories, cinemas and underground railway stations had no place in ...”

“... Brittan, Hurd, Fowler, Chalker and Ridley were produced – all divorced. Palmerston, Asquith and Lloyd George were cited as testimony to the morality of previous days and ages. Many were the cautions against hypocrisy. Mr Parkinson finally resigned on the morning of Friday, 15 October, at more or less the hour that copies of the last edition of the ...”

“... him concern’: he believed him to be his illegitimate brother. Her grandfather John Horatio Lloyd had, in the 1830s, ‘exposed himself in the Temple Gardens’ and run ‘naked in the sight of some nursemaids’, thus losing the opportunity to become solicitor-general. He ‘was forced to retire from political and legal work for four years’, Franny ...”

“... The first harvest of cabinet appointments shows Georgetown beating the Mall every time. Lloyd Bentsen, the prince of Capitol influence-peddlers, gets the Treasury. Alan Greenspan, the reactionary fan of Ayn Rand, who has roosted at the Federal Reserve these many years, is beseeched to ‘stay on’. Winston Lord, an old Kissinger hand, gets the Asia ...”

“... open mind about arguments for staying put. According to Ward, Blinken and the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, presented him with three choices: ‘Option 1: Stick to the Trump-era timeline. Option 2: Negotiate an extension to the deal with the Taliban, permitting American forces to stay beyond the set deadline. And Option 3: Rip up the pact altogether and ...”

“... to be rescued by firefighters. The chair of the ICA’s board, the redoubtable Mrs Horatio Gates Lloyd Jr, was delighted. Warhol suggested that she take part in one of his movies. ‘Why, Mr Warhol, nobody’s ever asked me anything like that before. What would I have to do?’ she said. ‘Would you fuck with Sam?’ Warhol asked. (Sam was one of his ...”

“... one of O’Brian’s novels, Richard Temple (1962), Tolstoy deduces that Charles was an outspoken Lloyd George man, and that his son came to see him as being shamefully déclassé. Aubrey’s father, a Whig at a time when the Tories have the upper hand at the Admiralty, blights his career, and Tobias Barrow in The Unknown Shore (1959), a dry run for ...”

“... acting on the stage’ in the description of the political contacts-man and Astor consigliere Tom Jones, using words of the sort that later stuck like labels to Waldorf’s son David wherever he went. Waldorf’s wife, whom he met on an Atlantic crossing, was the opposite. Variously compared to a gnat, a grasshopper and a Chinese cracker, Nancy Langhorne was ...”

“... range’ of the party’s new parliamentary candidates, he began to tell me about Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones. I hadn’t heard of him. ‘You should meet him,’ the MP said. A press officer cut in. ‘He’s a Devon farmer, who set up an amazing social programme, which Channel 4 did a documentary on, to help underprivileged black kids from inner cities escape to ...”

“... launderette is opened on Queensway, London 1949.’4 January. George F. tells me that when Andrew Lloyd Webber, the Lord Lloyd Webber, as we must now say, bought his Canaletto at Christie’s he paid the £10 million bill by Access in order to earn the air miles – enough presumably to last him till the end of his ...”

“... great weather, really enjoyed it. Good, because I’ll be spending a lot more time there’ (Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs). ‘It never entered my mind that populism would defeat capitalism in its country of origin’ (Jürgen Habermas). ‘Perhaps the British have to go in order that one day they may properly return’ (Jochen Buchsteiner, Frankfurter ...”

“... vivacious, witty, playful and attractive to women’. Others excite more sympathy, such as Thomas Jones (1870-1955, ‘civil servant and benefactor’) whose agreeable qualities ‘made him particularly attractive to women, especially after his wife’s death’; one immediately senses a whole squadron of those female ‘forceful personalities’ steaming ...”