“... or even fifteen-minute pick-ups, none likely to have any emotional content. As he had told John Lehmann, “I freely admit to having no romantic notions about trade.”’ ‘Their residence in Paris in spring 1965 made clear to both Howard and Gore how much more they preferred Rome. Nightlife and cruising were easier, more casual there, and there were ...”

“... that men are sometimes wicked on purpose; Robert Kee, the hot-eyed public prosecutor … When John Birt arrived at the BBC as Deputy Director-General at the end of the 1980s, apocalyptic assessments of the programme were back in fashion. According to Birt, the BBC’s Chairman, Marmaduke Hussey, regarded Panorama as a microcosm of a BBC that was ‘out of ...”

“... and its vicarage sit on a large parcel of land. (As Tawney might have predicted, the vicar, John Perkins, a bookish man who kept a lock on his study door, is far from being a spiritual leader.) Poorer dwellings are shown by dense clusters of tiny red dots, often in more remote areas. ‘A house with a lean-to’ yields a cache of information about a ...”

“... London: images of Chinese commandos and skeletal German tanks abandoned in the Libyan desert. Lee Miller, after spending the early part of the war documenting efforts at home, persuaded Withers to let her go to Normandy, and then to follow the Allied advance through Belgium to Germany. Her reports and pictures – including of herself in Hitler’s bath ...”

“... put political cartoons on the map. The print-makers of the 1760s had a field-day with a heroic John Wilkes (‘Wilkes and Liberty’) and with Lord Bute as Public Enemy Number One (no fewer than four hundred anti-Bute satires appeared, mainly sporting a jackboot and a petticoat inscribed ‘no petticoat government’, in reference to Bute’s alleged ...”

“... questions about the mysteries of the Devil gets such good historical answers. From Tymms (1949) to Miller (1985) to the touchingly named Herdman (is he trying to keep us safe, inside the yard?) the literary study of doubles roots itself in Christian accounts of the world, describing how, by trick, by election or by sin, characters break open, split apart, see ...”

“... for example, a head as simple as a bean seed.) Later there were American connections – in 1916 John Quinn began collecting his work; he knew the photographers Edward Steichen and Man Ray – and Romanian connections, which were maintained all his life. There is hardly a significant name which does not turn up in some context or other, from Picasso and the ...”

“... up the steeply banked terraces. But noble as the site appears, it is not entirely benign. The poet John Lucas, in 92 Acharnon Street, reminds us that the old Olympic stadium is where ‘the Colonels assembled schoolchildren for parades so that they might learn to salute the Greek flag.’ Across a never relenting stream of traffic, motorbikes cascading from ...”

“... of the recordings take the form of interviews, and the presenters don’t make matters any easier; John Lehmann, for example, speaks to Aldous Huxley as if he were questioning him with a view to offering him something at the Foreign Office. Which just goes to show that broadcasting vices existed long before the days of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. None of ...”

“... strand of documentary theatre was launched with a series of Living Newspapers, described by Arthur Miller as ‘the only new form that was ever introduced into the American theatre’. Modern dance was eased out of its overlooked niche; the revolutionary lighting designs of Abe Feder resculpted the stage. Audience surveys recorded that two-thirds of spectators ...”

“... those contemptible middlebrows Thornton Wilder and Archibald MacLeish. He was furious when Arthur Miller married Marilyn Monroe. ‘The man has responsibilities to the intellectuals in this country,’ my father stormed. ‘We’ll lose credibility.’ (That wasn’t the way I saw it, beating off with the notorious Playboy spread of Marilyn open on my ...”

“... no prerogative but what the law of the land allows him,’ he was echoing what his predecessor Sir John Fortescue had written in the 15th century: the king had no power to alter the law (that was for Parliament) or to administer it (that was for the judges). He was also reacting to what the law reporter John Hawarde had ...”

“... boas and beads if they could help it. The revues of the early Fifties which featured Jonathan Miller still had their quota of rouged youths. But at long last the IQ level of the Footlights rose into triple figures. Successively onto the scene came such butch illuminati as Miller, Michael Frayn and Peter Cook, with ...”

“... paid off handsomely, though Greene ended up with little profit when he was squeezed out by Arthur Miller. It was a time of crisis for Marilyn, when her marriage to Joe DiMaggio was breaking up and her affair with Miller beginning. In 1956 she converted to Judaism, married Miller, and went ...”

“... as well as her vanity, extravagance and shrewishness. He claims she had an affair with Bruce Miller, another expat performer, famous – as Rubenhold intriguingly writes – for his ‘papier-mâché clockwork orchestra’. Miller later claimed that he never did more than kiss Belle and ‘could not be more than a ...”