“... worked hard on Close Encounters, and her account of what she did, however angled and reedited it may be; shows what producers are for – mainly inventing ways of keeping the talent and the money from falling out irreparably. She didn’t work on the shooting of Taxi Driver, but the film has just the edgy temperament she has: an indication perhaps that if ...”

“... prime by the stocking tops, to borrow one of Denis’s phrases, which Mrs Thatcher often used. May God forgive them. For the road to 22 November 1990, when Mrs Thatcher resigned, was mostly paved with gold. Never have we seen such an advance in the condition of the ordinary decent hard-working socially responsible and ambitious people of Britain. My kind ...”

“... likely to concede a victory to Reagan’s ‘new globalist’ policy. The poor suffering Angolans may therefore have to wait until there is a new incumbent in the White House and the pendulum of American foreign policy once again begins to swing away from the idea of America as the world’s ...”

“... Becket shows us a man whose origins, like William’s, were not of the highest: his father ‘may have been in textiles’. Like William, Thomas owed his rise, not to inheritance, but to his being sent to the household of a distant and more powerful relative: that of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. As a clerk, though not yet a priest, and Chancellor ...”

“... duo with Judith Jamison, choreographed by Alvin Ailey) to Robbins, Tharp and Karole Armitage. He may, on occasion, have been abused or misused by his choreographers. But ultimately it is not possible to abuse him. Even when the role is not right, he is always more than the role. He is, almost literally, a transcendent dancer. Which is what dance strives to ...”

“... there are one or two (you always get one or two) who will no longer speak to me. After the show I may go to the Safety Curtain, or on to a party, but usually I just walk home. I say that people know my face, but the mere act of walking generally protects me from recognition. In Charing Cross Road for example, I become invisible. This enables me to unwind in ...”

“... and temporally concrete moral claims.’ In British society the new or newish other elements that may be altering perception of death and its management include Aids (which, as Porter says, is bringing generations polarised by age into the common predicament of prolonged terminal illness); the cultural pluralism brought about by immigrant communities who do ...”

“... of the great jail-break of Eastern Europe, and perhaps see the President of the USSR greeted on May Day with the words ‘Christ is risen, Mikhail ...”

“... to other incubators and that prematurely born infants died during the transfer. This incident may have provoked some of the later charges. When I questioned the incubator story and Amnesty’s research and motives, there was a fairly predictable reaction. Amnesty officials stuck by their story, citing their diligence in cross-checking all such ...”

“... there is nothing wrong with the thesis that the Israelis killed Bull, but the whole truth may never be known. Israel, keen to reinforce the awe with which its security services are regarded in the Arab world, is often a willing as well as a convenient scapegoat in such matters, and there are those who believe that the British or the Americans were the ...”

“... they had taken down the tales direct from their nurses or grannies. The very word ‘fairy’ may be related to Latin fari, ‘to speak’, which gives fata (Italian for ‘fairy’) and fée (French) as well as the words for Fate in various languages: ‘that which is spoken’. Fairy-tales tell how people cope with the hand they are dealt, and they ...”

“... of Nazism more clearly than some of the writers of the Seventies and Eighties. The misgivings one may have about Hitler and Stalin are on a different level. ‘Parallel lives’ are a notoriously difficult medium, used only infrequently since Plutarch, and more suited to a long essay than a volume of almost 1200 pages. Plutarch used this form to encourage his ...”

“... of recognising the request for a bribe: ‘Have you come fully prepared?’ Or ‘Of course you may have such and such a form but it will take a few days.’ And then there is the problem of overcoming one’s embarrassment at the unambiguous dishonesty of the exchange. In the first few months after the revolution, when planeloads of journalists were still ...”

“... they’re from British Rail, and I’m left reflecting that in a year or two one or other of them may well be writing me (like his counterparts in electricity and water before him) to offer me shares in Rail-North or BritTrak. I’ll reply in righteous fury, How can you find it in your conscience to sell off the commonweal? He’ll reply wearily and almost ...”

“... with the riposte: ‘five, six or even twenty wrongs don’t make a right. The United States may have supported dictatorships in the past, but in this case they are ranged against a dictator. Surely on this occasion they should be supported?’ The same answer greets the other standard anti-war argument – that aggression has been one of the constant ...”