“... of the exclamation-mark which gives a stirring emphasis to the Victorian adventure story (and the name of the Victorian school), Worstward Ho is the signal for an implosion of fictional matter. ‘I can’t go on, I’ll go on’ is perhaps the most memorable of Beckett’s phrases, conveying as it does the force of contradiction as an agent in thickening and ...”

“... exercised and the ground is so springy.’ She even turned out to have met a dog of Una’s called Billy; one section of their report, ‘The Billy Incident’, consists of their attempts to find out whether the dead dog had indeed suffered from the ailments ascribed to him by Ladye’s spirit. Hall and Troubridge also hired ...”

“... with the danger of another fall and another break. The Poet (it’s so good to call him by the name I gave him when nothing was wrong) has to help me dress and go up or down the stairs. It’s about as tough on him as it is on me. I was fully of the opinion when the cancer diagnosis was first made that he had the worst of it, but since trying to haul ...”

“... at his own roots in hack Science Fiction.) Leon has odd narrative qualifications. His mind, like Billy Pilgrim’s in Slaughterhouse-Five, has been damaged beyond repair by war. Leon volunteered for the US Marines, fought in Vietnam, took part in a My Lai-type operation in which 59 villagers were killed, deserted to Sweden, became a ship-worker, was ...”

“... and Radio Normandie, and how they astutely recruited favourites the BBC had created (Ted Ray, Billy Cotton and his band, the gramophone record-presenter Christopher Stone), and not only set them off to better advantage but did so in pre-recorded, packaged series that were much more profitable for the performer. In an early demonstration of the dread art ...”

“... father was a Gikuyu, his mother’s family originated in Rwanda and later emigrated to Uganda. The name Binyavanga was given to Wainaina in honour of his maternal grandfather. In Kenya its obvious foreignness sets him apart as being exotic; he confesses that ‘an imaginary Ugandan of some kind resides in me, one who lets me withhold myself from claiming, or ...”

“... with the outside world. This is fundamental: ‘AA has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.’ It has no views on politics or on anything (even alcoholism); it’s pure praxis. On the ideological level, it remains faithful to its founder Dr Bob’s dying injunction to the faithful: ‘keep it ...”

“... achieved the distinction of being represented, on an upper floor of Wheaton College, Illinois – Billy Graham’s old college – in the collection of memorabilia of such Christian writers as George MacDonald, T.S. Eliot, Charles Williams and Tolkien. It is evidence of some sort of fame. A.N. Wilson sees ‘unmistakable and remarkable evidence of something ...”

“... Aboriginals. The birthmark oscillated as he drank.   One of the Aboriginals, a very thin hill-billy type with a frenzy of matted hair, leaned both elbows on the counter, and listened.   ‘Sacred sites!’ the big man leered. ‘If all what them says was sacred sites there’d be three hundred bloody billion sacred sites in Australia.’   ‘Not ...”

“... must have been annoying for the young fellow, at the very least. But then Betjeman always enjoyed name-calling and was a great one for the put-down. Myfanwy Piper, the artist John Piper’s wife (and emphatically ‘My Myfanwy’ in Betjeman’s poem ‘Myfanwy at Oxford’), is quoted by Hillier as saying: ‘the game had to be played.’ Maybe that’s just ...”

“... do so), but the man described in my book as the ‘young planter’ is still alive, and I will not name him. Within four hours of the explosions on 21 November five Irishmen – Paddy Hill, Gerry Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, Billy Power and Johnny Walker – were arrested at Heysham in Lancashire as they got off a train from ...”

“... him as a slick mannequin in the Bill Clinton or Felipe González mould – or even a mixture of Billy Graham and Prince Charles. Initially, he seemed prepared to give Blair a chance, comparing him favourably with Keir Hardie – a Benn family hero whose biography Caroline wrote in 1992. But once Blair began to include Lloyd George in the Labour Party’s ...”

“... city which British readers are bound to assume is Glasgow. You don’t find out the boy’s name, or his age, although hints and the boy’s style of reflection encourage you to guess he’s between 14 and 16. At half-time, the boy and two friends start exploring an abandoned factory. After a bit, the boy’s friends hit him and run away laughing. The ...”

“... Plat du Jour is an album of dance tracks united by the theme of food. Herbert has made a name for himself as a producer from collaborations with Róisín Murphy and Björk, but Plat du Jour is a different kettle of fish, a personal project that has taken a couple of years to devise and record. As the opening track makes clear – it’s called ‘The ...”

“... of Kings or Ellington swinging Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite in 1960 (partly orchestrated by Billy Strayhorn), the culminating marvel and joy of the burgeoning field of jazz multiculturalism. The latter is expressed with patriotic fervour in an extended, five-minute version of W.C. Handy’s ‘St Louis Blues’ recorded ‘live’ on the evening of 7 ...”