“... Current Biography, July 1976. Edgar L. Doctorow was born in New York City on 6 January 1931 to David R. and Rose Doctorow, whom he has described as ‘old-fashioned social democrats’. His grandparents on both sides were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Doctorow grew up on Eastburn Avenue, in the Bronx. His mother was a pianist and his father had a store in ...”

“... at any rate? The misinformation would seem to have been on Radji’s part. Two years later, in May 1978, when Radji is acknowledging (to himself) that torture had continued long after he had denied its existence, he is concerned with trying to discredit those who had been tortured. Even when cabling Tehran during the final collapse in November 1978, ‘to ...”

“... in an eternity of vain research along endless shelves.’ Jump forward seventy years, and for David Lodge’s Pooteresque Adam Appleby, the BM is a cosy, quintessentially safe asylum. Adam’s working life there is a matter of daily comforting rituals, as when he cools his research-fevered brow on the downstairs men’s lavatory cistern. The BM shelters ...”

“... assassination. Every version of Tony Hancock’s life zooms in on his alcoholism and depression. David Bellos does not, in the case of Jacques Tati, have a ruthless control freak or incurable melancholic on his hands, although even his book contains one or two tales of debts unpaid, employees exploited and lapses into despair. (A very small price to pay for ...”

“... grow accustomed from childhood: the most menacing army in the region is described here as if it is David against an Arab Goliath. Yet the Jewish Goliath has sent Lebanon back 20 years, and Israelis themselves even further: we now appear to be a lynch-mob culture, glued to our televisions, incited by a premier whose ‘leadership’ is being launched and ...”

“... On 11 February​ , David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) in the US, announced that his team of almost a thousand scientists had detected evidence of gravitational waves emanating from a pair of black holes 1.3 billion light years from Earth. It was empirical confirmation of Einstein’s theory of general relativity ...”

“... who wants to deliver a portrait of the whole life, inside and out – something the subject may have spent a lifetime scheming to avoid.Before this biography, the name ‘Brookner’ probably brought to mind a succession of solitary women pining for love while waiting for death, an image that critics were quick to attach to the author of these ...”

“... pet name, if they have one: so you get two Berties (Edward VII and George VI), Georgie (George V), David (Edward VIII) and Lilibet. When it gets to the Windsors’ foreign cousins there are Willi, Nicky, Charlie (of Norway), Foxy (of Bulgaria), Missy and Mignon. The joke was exploited long ago in Cecil Beaton’s spoof My Royal Past, though Tomlinson’s ...”

“... are as much at home in Jane Austen’s dressing-room as are Dostoevsky and Scott Fitzgerald. This may be all to the good, though it leads him to such remarks as that Elizabeth Bennet’s ‘gay resilience in a society tending always towards dull conformity would make her a worthy heroine in a Stendhal novel, which cannot be said for many English ...”

“... But anyone who expects a full and informed debate and a vote that reflects public opinion may be disappointed. There are several reasons. David Cameron, who is known to be opposed to the measure, has declined to make parliamentary time – i.e. time allocated by the government whips – available for it. This means ...”

“... criticism of Israel is excessive, the earlier adulation was, and that an answer to present woes may be found in the history of Zionism, including the period just before the birth of the state described in Norman Rose’s ‘A Senseless, Squalid War’ and David Cesarani’s Major Farran’s Hat. Both books deal with the ...”

“... Verse, like coins, mint strictly, precisely, honestly. Follow the rule stubbornly: So that words may be compact, Thoughts – expansive... How then does Mackay Brown go about his new-minting process? In the first place, he uses the opportunities of narrative to return the figurative to the concrete. Scarcely have we had the disquisition on the worn state of ...”

“... Because it’s there’ may be sufficient motive for the intrepid, but many are disheartened by the laborious hours needed to reach a position even to attempt an assault on Finnegans Wake. For such timid aspirants and for those in the early stages of fascination, Roland McHugh’s book, presenting information gathered by earlier explorers (including himself), will save months of preparatory toil ...”

“... Just under forty years ago David Erdman provided for William Blake historical contexts in abundance in Blake: Prophet against Empire (1954). It was a remarkable work of literary detection, which still dominates the field. Some Blake readers have felt that his attribution of correspondence between text and contemporaneous events was over-literal (as well as hazardous), and Jon Mee is one of these ...”

“... to visit the animals: ‘Meet your brothers, take them to your hearts and respect them.’ But as David Hancocks colourfully describes, most precursors of the modern zoo have been the opposite of this, from the circuses of Rome to the travelling menageries of the 18th and 19th centuries, shuttered in so that passers-by got no free view; and as he says (and I ...”