“... attitude of one who is about to play; he was probably a banker’s son. In 1769 Wright painted Mrs John Ashton. The Quakerish modesty of her black and white dress is belied by its gloss. Her late husband had been in the slave trade. Mrs Sarah Clayton (a courtesy ‘Mrs’, she was unmarried) held a leading position in the coal trade in Liverpool; she points to ...”

“... of Dali and Céline, yet to have strained out any relish or abandon from the mixture. He took his pleasures sadly. Impersonalised or even brutalised gay sex, while it had been tried before all right, was something he both cottoned to and helped to proselytise for. The essential figure in the world of the Factory was either a runaway boy or a ...”

“... had no idea of the aggressive manner of this mob. Outraged by the elusiveness of their prey, they took to publishing allegations about Blunt which had no foundation at all: notably that he was responsible for the deaths of 49 wartime Dutch special agents, a story the Sunday Telegraph refused to retract and which is still repeated.Some latent reservoir of ...”

“... long-standing scientific and medical concerns. Regulatory action became more likely as the press took up the call for anti-obesity measures. Taking their case to the Department of Health and Human Services, the sugar lobbyists received a sympathetic hearing from the director of the Office of Global Affairs, William Steiger, a godson of the first President ...”

“... body. It didn’t follow a clear pathway to modern academic maturity: 19th-century anthropology took shape under the disparate influences of sociologists, biologists, jurists and classicists. Even today its disciplinary contours are strikingly different in Britain and the United States. Similar divergences were also evident in the most deep-rooted and ...”

“... not only because he worked hard at them, but also because he listened to advice, especially from John Gardner but also, more remotely, from Hemingway, Chekhov and V.S. Pritchett. One of the things he learned was the need for arduous revision, draft after draft. Another lesson was that the writer needs to trust the tale. Lawrence notoriously advised the ...”

“... bite like a dog’, otherwise they become ‘an affront’. Like his contemporaries, della Casa took for granted that laughter was mainly an expression of scorn – ‘it being a mark of greater contempt to laugh at a person, than to do him any real injury’. As the Elizabethan humanist Thomas Wilson wrote, ‘the occasion of laughter and the mean that ...”

“... rule, tens of thousands more have been disclosed to the Undercover Policing Inquiry chaired by Sir John Mitting. The inquiry was ordered in 2015 by Theresa May, then home secretary, after it was revealed that the police had spied on the family and friends of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in Eltham in South-East London in 1993 in a racist attack by a gang ...”

“... of sterile lesbian passion, and Mme Roberts satisfactorily preserved her reputation. Pabst took immense care over physical details. Louise Brooks, who was used to choosing her own costumes (Paramount had let her play a manicurist in a $500 beaded evening dress), found Pabst selecting everything – ‘from an ermine coat to my girdle’. His final ...”

“... perfectly squared, without the least winding or washboarding – flat as a sheet of plate glass. John Hersey, The Walnut Door three four knock at the door – imagine the door as subject no mystery just a coathanger a formal object on which for some reason you’ve to drape its own history – how it began – is began better than started? – began as the ...”

“... at the National Gallery from October until January – The Quintet of the Astonished, which took as a starting point Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ Mocked, was much admired when it was shown there in 2000. The clarity and sharpness of the images on the screen in which heads changed in slow motion – so slow that it ...”

“... writer), and a tiring friend, because he wanted to talk and to drink all night. Lévi-Strauss took in the ideas, but without the vodka – this proved a let-down to his exuberant associate. Jakobson lived, taught and published in the United States for forty more years after this, first at Columbia and later at Harvard. He made constant raids out of ...”

“... which her lover made it clear that he visited her only for occasional ‘relief’. Presently she took off for Paris, and he yearned to follow her, when he could find the money, to establish a proper romantic liaison. Before he could get there, however, after the gambling episode at Baden, Apollinaria had fallen into the arms of a handsome young Spanish ...”

“... friend’s toy boy: ‘She says she found him in Sun Valley, but I’m still betting that she took him out of a tree. He’s awful + behaves like a bad waiter.’He kept a tight rein on feelings, which is why song was so crucial to his mental balance. Only in a few passages, such as his detailed description of seeing the casts come off his shattered legs ...”

“... 51 when he won, but by 1988 already the author of his major works. The Foundation nonetheless took a big punt on the genius of Richard Powers, who was awarded his MacArthur in 1989, aged only 32. I haven’t checked, but he is probably the youngest novelist ever to win a fellowship. Generally unknown in 1989, and temperamentally reticent, he has lately ...”