“... shopping channel. And nobody could accuse the Official ARRSE Guide of not being thorough: a whole page is devoted to the legend of the ‘wank sock’, a more or less waterproof receptacle ‘for the products of the British soldier’s occasional forays into the recesses of his dark imagination’. My favourite line in army blather, however, is everything ...”

“... of crime and the dustbins of showbiz. It’s this (and the look of so many quotations on the page) that makes his work initially inviting and accessible to a general reader like me. He writes with grace and wit and raises the odd eyebrow at those in his profession who don’t, though he can’t be too censorious of jargon, having invented a lot ...”

“... have acquired a more general interest as history has become more popular both on the page and on the screen. The doyen of TV historians, Simon Schama, is in a league of his own and his political viewpoint not in the forefront, but the new breed of historian – Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and Norman Stone – all came to prominence under Mrs ...”

“... man, poor man’, he told us about an email he’d received from, as he put it, ‘someone named Alan Dershowitz, who describes himself as a feisty civil libertarian from Harvard Law School’ (it’s hard to convey on the page the exquisite irony with which he spoke these words). ...”

“... I’d kept by me as a student. The familiarity of the contents jarred with the table’s front page. Only 31 copies of the table had been printed, the recipients listed on the cover. The table, dated 24 June 1947, had been prepared to accompany a classified report. The distribution lists for the two documents were a close match; nearly everyone who was ...”

“... quarantined each successive reader from any trace of grubby-handed predecessors. Remote-control page-turning mechanisms now allow users of the British Library to read rare books under glass: like safe sex, responsible reading has become disembodied. This might have pleased the late Victorian contributors to the Lancet who campaigned for library books to be ...”

“... Two, the son of the English actor Hugh Williams, schooled by Life and Eton, a youthful toiler for Alan Ross’s London Magazine, an erstwhile globetrotter and a lifelong London resident, seems as English as they come. (So English, in fact, that he will object that his mother is Australian.) He simply makes it a more interesting condition than others succeed ...”

“... and some people will be relieved to hear, final – volume of her riotous autobiography’. On page one of volume one there is a quotation from Harriette Wilson about the meaning of the term ‘gentleman’ – a subject not really very close to Skelton’s heart. For an English autobiographer, she seems wonderfully free from snobbery, whether plain or ...”

“... many things that we thirst for more and more facts and explanations. He gives a fascinating eight-page account of various scientific investigations into the mysterious behaviour of sauce béarnaise (an emulsion of vinegar, egg yolks and butter), but says not a word about that even more mysterious and tricky sauce, beurre blanc (just vinegar, water and ...”

“... Luce’s taste for ‘relentless “departmental” organisation’, according to his biographer Alan Brinkley. Time was first to be called Facts, and its research department ‘was the only non-clerical area of the magazine to hire women … and for many years it hired only women.’ An editor wrote the young ladies a cheering memo: Checking is ...”

“... slotted into place, hides the signature). It was delivered to von der Embde along with a three-page instruction booklet. This included advice on how to mount the mannequin on its stand and pin its arms and thighs into place. Detailed instructions on how to make it pose like the Venus de’ Medici were given, along with a recommendation to comb the ...”

“... to betray no sign of excitement, engagement or curiosity. Could this impersonator be the renowned Alan Midgette, who in 1967 ‘stood in’ for Andy at the University of Utah, of all places, and had the students demanding their thousand-dollar fee back? Warhol’s hope had been, ‘Maybe they’ll like him better than me,’ but surely there was some faint ...”

“... this shining example of legal virtue, O.J. has subsequently added the services of F. Lee Bailey, Alan Dershowitz and even Dershowit’s brother Nathan. No one I know had ever heard of Nathan before; Alan Dershowitz is famous as the lawyer portrayed in Reversal of Fortune, the movie version of the Claus von Bülow ...”

“... creativity and explains the secrets of his appeal in a way unmatched by any other critic’. Alan Bliss’s purpose is more modest. Twenty years ago he had the idea of publishing a paper on the Anglo-Saxon story of Finn and Hengest. Discovering that nearly all his conclusions had been anticipated in lectures by Tolkien (the diffident words are ...”

“... The impact which the newsreel films of Belsen made at the end of the war was enormous,’ Alan Borg, the Director-General of the Imperial War Museum writes in his foreword to The Relief of Belsen,1 a collection of eye-witness accounts. ‘Many still remember exactly where and when they first saw these awful images ...”