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“... panics, his horse bolts, he faints and falls and breaks his hip. When the great surgeon (‘Sir John’) who tends him reluctantly confirms that he will never be able to ride again, Sainty ‘heaved a sigh of unmistakable relief. “Ah! well, that’s a comfort, anyhow,” he said.’ From now on, Sainty’s lameness will be the useful badge of his ...”

“... hospital; the police turned a blind eye. The construction workers then marched up Broadway to City Hall, where they confronted the flag flying at half mast in honour of anti-war protesters who had recently been shot dead. Some of the men scaled the building and raised the flag while the rest warned city officials never to lower the American colours ...”

“... Blair’s call for the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees to be rewritten, and John Townend’s complaint about the ‘mongrelisation’ of Britain.) Balfour warned Parliament that the Jews ‘remained a people apart, and not merely held a religion differing from the vast majority of their fellow countrymen, but only intermarried among ...”

“... give away). Simon Leys, that wise Belgian Sinologist, critic and novelist, rightly notes, in The Hall of Uselessness, Simenon’s ability to achieve ‘unforgettable effects by ordinary means. His language is poor and bare (like the language of the unconscious) … It would be difficult to make an anthology of his best pages: he does not have best pages, he ...”

“... would like to think they are journalists, not cultural ambassadors. But the director general, Tony Hall, is not so sure. He has claimed that ‘the World Service is one of the UK’s most important cultural exports and one of our best sources of global influence.’ Similarly, the current director of the World Service Group has argued that the BBC is in the ...”

“... Write, Speak contains little except interviews; when an answer sounds like an echo in a marble hall, it is because he has repurposed it from Speak, Memory. The sameness is unrelieved – until the late 1960s, when various malpractising journalists begin asking him about hippies, which is pleasant. (‘I feel nothing but contemptuous pity for the illiterate ...”

“... at George Cukor’s house in Hollywood in 1972. Fifteen famous directors are there, including John Ford, Rouben Mamoulian, Robert Mulligan, George Stevens, Robert Wise, William Wyler, Billy Wilder. Hitchcock sits next to Buñuel, says very little, then at one point puts an arm round his companion’s shoulder and says with deep ...”

“... military establishment and the new government in Washington, a town presided over by another John/Jack the lad. Profumo’s go-getting reputation and unstuffy demeanour made him attractive to the men around JFK, who liked that he didn’t seem like a typical Brit, never mind a typical Tory. He was extremely sociable, and well suited to the work ...”

“... in the 1990s was self-imposed. But as Georgina Born makes clear in her definitive analysis of the John Birt and Greg Dyke eras, the consistent impetus came from government. It’s no surprise that Margaret Thatcher wanted to take on the BBC – if anything, the surprise is how long it took her. (In her first term, Thatcher’s main concern was with BBC ...”

“... the sea. Stevenson looked from the top window and saw his characters out there: Billy Bones, Long John Silver and the emerging cast of Kidnapped. The Channel was busy with the ghosts of real seafarers, such as the smuggler Slippery Rogers, who once came to Bournemouth in a boat rowed by forty men, carrying thirty thousand gallons of Dutch brandy. For ...”

“... studied theatre in Paris for a short time, and then returned to Ireland, playing a small part in John Ford’s film The Quiet Man and working for a time at the Gate Theatre with Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir. In the summer of 1953 he directed Siobhán McKenna and Cyril Cusack in The Playboy of the Western World, playing the part of Shawn Keogh ...”

“... say. One must make the time. Take this morning. You’re going to be sitting outside the town hall waiting for me. You could read then.’ ‘I have to watch the motor, maam. This is the Midlands. Vandalism is universal.’ With Her Majesty safely delivered into the hands of the lord lieutenant, Summers did a precautionary circuit of the motor then ...”

“... drafted his 12-year-old daughter Margarita into his flamenco act in vaudeville, casino and beer-hall, she became something more than his dancing partner. If she had no choice then, she appears to have been unable ever to break out of that pattern. When she married Orson, she encouraged him to leave Hollywood and go into politics, as he was tempted to do, so ...”

“... his life, work and influence on a variety of artists, from Marcel Duchamp to Michel Foucault, John Ashbery to Georges Perec. I recently spent several months working my way through this enormous archive in the stately gloom of the ornately carved Salon de Manuscrits on the first floor of the Bibliothéque Nationale, just down from the Bourse where Roussel ...”

“... families of their donors), and it would soon give rise to a distinct interior aesthetic. Just as John Fowler, who would become the Trust’s favoured ‘decorator’ in the late Fifties, scorned the idea of ‘design’, James Lees-Milne distinguished the true country-house interior from the ‘contrived “old world” flavour’ of an architect like ...”