“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... country villa stocked with the choicest furnishings and pictures that money can buy. Des Esseintes may have joined the bourgeoisie, but Jérôme and Sylvie have to work for their living. Though they start out like yuppies, they prefer flâneurism to the bureaucratic rat-race and are soon left behind by their contemporaries. How to escape? In one of the ...”

“... verse’). Larkin is named as Amis’s second-favourite poet (Housman is tops, though he may not have stayed tops, we suspect, if Amis had ever sat next to him at Trinity High Table), and as his ‘best friend’. Mysteriously, though, the pair of them seem rarely to have met: in thirty years, Larkin never invited Amis up to Hull – not even to look ...”

“... generosity: it includes power, security, company. Who can say where and with what force jealousy may strike? The politics of the Left were those of people in a hurry who believed that a victory at the polls would mean a transformation of society. Under a Labour or a Communist government old vices would disappear. The most impatient, like Naomi’s brother ...”

“... bad name, and if Eastern Europe is a role model, the Russian people and the fragmenting republics may reject it altogether. On the other hand, I found, on my last visit in June, that many Russians were already fed up with perestroika and wanted only to find food in the shops. Many more said that things were better under Brezhnev. A radical deputy of the ...”

“... off work, and without the first he became a mere ghost in his home, disregarded by everybody. He may have misled the interviewers by being less articulate than the others, who took great pleasure in being conscious of their situation, and reviewing it for the writers’ benefit in graphically objective terms. Even so, I should have thought, on the basis of ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... a year in Delhi alone according to Elisabeth Bumiller in her classic study of Indian women, May you be the mother of a hundred sons – that they now form part of that canonical catalogue of Indian horrors that foreigners living here try not to dwell on too much as they go about their generally very pleasant business. (On the other hand, it must be ...”

“... and left to resonate. The ‘wild name’ is flesh, and heavy. Blackburn speculates on how he may have felt, but her book contains none of the amateur psychology that is the stuff of more conventional biography. Instead she illuminates her subject’s state of mind by exploring the furnishings of her own. Napoleon’s dreadful situation reminds her of an ...”

“... to scare the electorate about the results of Labour’s tax plans if they gained office. And it may have paid off. Labour had been in the lead according to the polls from the beginning of the campaign, but the final polls indicated that the Tories were catching up. It was all remarkably reminiscent of the 1970 Election, when Labour had been in the lead ...”

“... combination of ‘alla’ found in the name of his foster-father, or observes that Roderick Usher may have got his surname from Noble Lake Usher, who often performed opposite Poe’s parents Daniel and Eliza. As Silverman shows more clearly than any earlier biographer, everything in Poe’s life leads back to his blighted childhood and youth. He was probably ...”