“... private lives, on the other. The book, I said, should be revealing on all fronts, but also be frank about revelation itself. If he could not discuss a matter of importance – his son, for example, and the custody battle, or what happened in bed with the two Swedish girls – we should seek to explain why in a statement about sleaze. I said what we ...”

“... and expert on China, a man who fascinates Steiner and whom he wanted to write about in Frank Kermode’s Modern Masters series, published in the 1970s. Steiner had first seen Needham at a protest meeting against Anglo-American intervention in Korea in 1950, at which the distinguished scientist claimed to have incontrovertible proof of the use of ...”

“... who feed them. In Pity the Billionaire: The Unlikely Comeback of the American Right, Thomas Frank describes a similar process in America: ‘The conservative renaissance rewrites history according to the political demands of the moment, generates thick smokescreens of deliberate bewilderment, grabs for itself the nobility of the common toiler, and ...”

“... ship’ for emptying bladder rather than bowels.)Channon and Nicolson together give a close-up view of the abdication drama. In late October, Nicolson dined with Sibyl Colefax, Emerald Cunard and Laura Corrigan, hugely rich hostesses of a now vanished species, who devoted their lives to entertaining the London beau monde (Mrs Corrigan would give ...”

“... city long rumoured to be Troy, which was first excavated in 1865 by the underpaid consular Brit Frank Calvert, and then on a much larger scale by the wealthy German adventurer, genius and fabulist Heinrich Schliemann. More evidence, the so-called Tawagalawa letter, from an unnamed Hatti ruler to an unnamed ruler of the Ahhiyawa, refers to a past conflict ...”

“... ideals and values’ in the wringer-washer on the back porch (where it usually was in Frank Capra’s films) and they came out cleansed of any taint of humiliation. We could hold our heads high again. We could reconsecrate the marriage of virtue and power. (The first-person plural was easily conflated with ‘the nation’ and ‘the ...”

“... of over-cautious civil servants whom the Minister has it in his power to disregard. I write to Frank Dobson, my MP, saying, intemperately, that the Minister is more of a coward than many of the men who were executed. [I have not had a reply.] Yorkshire, 15 August. To Pateley Bridge on a lovely afternoon of flashing sunshine and rushing clouds, the drive ...”

“... For the Brzezinskis, the disappearance of Poland’s most famous composer was like the death of a close relative – ‘as tangible a note of darkness as any other news’.When the darkness finally began to lift, Brzezinski and his family witnessed what they saw as the abandonment of Poland by its erstwhile British and American friends, fearful of offending ...”

“... while claiming to be totally non-political, would often express opinions that were uncomfortably close to fascism.) When I first met her Linda had been a passionate admirer of the works of Tolkien but (possibly under my influence) was now beginning to grow out of them. Such feeble scraps of elementary data were about all that Jeremy and Harriet managed to ...”

“... He set off the fire suppressants. I didn’t see any weapon, but I don’t want to get too close to the dude … He looked all jacked up.’The accused (I’ll call him Fletcher), dressed in orange prison scrubs, was acting as his own defence. He’d mastered some lawyerly phrases and quickly scored a point with them. ‘Objection! Did you see me pull ...”

“... initiatives. Diplomatic postures have been more significant than military. Under Schröder, close ties were developed with Russia, in an entente that became the most distinctive feature of his foreign policy. But this was not a second Rapallo Pact, at the expense of western neighbours. Under Chirac and Berlusconi, France and Italy courted Putin scarcely ...”

“... every night ‘undress her before the fire … warm their bed with hot bricks, and then hold her close and kiss her, and how each morning he would warm her clothes and bring her figs and grapes and feed them to her’.Shortly after their marriage in 1879, Mabel got pregnant. She thought it was impossible to conceive except ‘at the climax moment of my ...”

“... front of our apartment, I was always jumping all over them in a passion.In Straight Life Pepper is frank – and hilarious – on the subject of his looks. Detailing his stay in an expensive detox sanitorium in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, he recalls prinking about in the nude after getting some huge shots of morphine to mitigate the symptoms of heroin ...”

“... the offering of an adequate assurance to Britain on this issue. This explains the extraordinarily close secret co-operation between Britain and a supposedly neutral Ireland during the Second World War, fully reported to the British Cabinet by Lord Cranborne in February 1945, which included provision for British command of both Irish and British forces in the ...”

“... of Christina Wayne and grew dependent on the Walking Dead franchise, whose original showrunner, Frank Darabont, sued them for misappropriated profit share and won a $200 million payout. Darabont had been fired from the show halfway through the filming of the second season, and AMC was putting pressure on the cast not to speak to the media. The actors, an ...”