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“... Royalist revellers, just as he linked the ‘flashy songs’ which ‘grate’ on ‘scrannel pipes’ in Lycidas with Royalist bishops and priests. In Samson Agonistes the ‘popular noise’, ‘hideous noise’ and ‘universal groan’ are ways of encoding the London crowd’s spontaneous groan at the executions of the regicides, and in Book Seven ...”

“... May, ‘an eclectic blend of ulysses, kilroy, icarus, neptune, ishmael, noah, jonah, columbus, and richard halliburton! So you must, in all kindness, emphasise your mortal finitude when next we meet!’ He had leave in June, and it is through Gordon’s faithful eyes that we see Plath on the cover of the first volume of the letters: blonde hair, red lipstick ...”

“... of the desert. She can, against the odds, be funny: ‘Dinkas in the market have long, brass-bound pipes. One of these smokers wears a T-shirt with the words “ever ready”. He looks less ready than anyone I’ve ever seen.’ One of her sententious entries reads: ‘Tactlessness is often taken for sincerity, and sincerity is in turn often taken for a ...”

“... turn one of them off. It’s a good service, a model, with none of the speakers – his two sons, Richard Eyre and Robert Bathurst – outstaying their welcome and Ben vividly recalled.Bathurst is particularly good, reading a Betjeman poem about golf, following it up with a very funny (and almost better) poem in parody by Ben himself. Since I know him chiefly ...”

“... was giving an award to Republican Senator Amo Houghton for being a good egg. I spoke to Richard Kind, who plays the press secretary in the sitcom Spin City, and his chum Tim Blake Nelson, who was very funny in O Brother, where art thou? ‘It’s a fair trade issue,’ said Richard Kind. ‘Canada is constantly ...”

“... apparent eagerness to wage nuclear war. Their campaign had a considerable impact, and when Richard Nixon got to the White House four years later he was convinced that scientists were a dangerously anti-Republican political lobby. Nixon shut down the Office of Science and Technology, and kicked the presidential science adviser out of the cabinet – an ...”

“... of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby. The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead ...”

“... Dr Johnson. ‘Be not deceiv’d by any level of the Exotick they may present you, Kilts, Bag-Pipes sort of thing. Haggis. You must keep eternal Vigilance.’ Mason considers himself warned.But what actually happens in it? Well. Dixon is a rollicking country lad, a Quaker from County Durham (‘Why, aye!’). He’s Enlightenment Man in his Tom Jones ...”

“... kindness and cruelty, now saving our bathwater for him because he is afraid of the sound of the pipes, now leaning in to intone, ‘I am not Yngve,’ knowing that this is his greatest fear – that those who walk among us, our loved ones, have been replaced. Not dead and not themselves.He continues to think along these lines as an adult: he is a ...”

“... air was warm and stuffy. There was a faint hissing sound, as if there was a leak in the radiator pipes. Maigret could hear the person in the top bunk tossing and turning and breathing heavily.The inspector silently removed his shoes, jacket and waistcoat. He stretched out on the lower bunk and felt a slight draught coming from somewhere. He picked up his ...”

“... and bars where the young stay late into the night in jasmine-scented courtyards to savour water pipes as their ancestors did in Ottoman times. Many young people in Damascus look and act like Americans, sitting in cafés, holding hands when they stroll with their girlfriends or boyfriends, buying jeans and trainers and hip-hop CDs. Others have chosen the ...”

“... of Received Ideas (‘novels: Pervert the masses’; ‘students: All of them … smoke their pipes in the street, and never study’). Roudinesco, like Flaubert, is dissatisfied with an intellectual discourse which increasingly resembles ‘a vast ledger full of entries for things and people – or rather people who have become things’. Flaubert the ...”

“... to spring a trap in our minds. ‘Rural England is where urban England now dumps its rubbish,’ Richard Girling writes. ‘Here it tips everything from garbage in landfills to fridges in ponds, broken cars and surplus people.’1 The Daily Mail says there is a plague of rats in Britain as a result of the lack of care taken in refuse collection. The ...”

“... but these were shut down and replaced by individual boilers for each flat; as a result ugly white pipes now hang off the towers, like sheets knotted together by escaping prisoners. Originally the façades of the towers were cut into by deep openings that left the broad hallways between flats open to the air and gave Kendall a view of St Paul’s ...”

“... in the flats above and below don’t even know there’s been a fire. This was something else.’ Richard Welsh is a senior officer with the London Fire Brigade. His pager went off at 1.18 a.m. ‘Initially they had six machines there,’ he said. ‘Then they asked for eight, and then ten, and then 15, 20, and then 25. I’m hearing that on the way there, so ...”