“... chapter. However, later remarks in unconnected conversations have given me to think that there may have been a deeper motive: as an avowed homosexualist with an extensive and curious knowledge of medical/military affairs in Cairo in the First World War, Monck (and not alone in that generation) had some kind of needle about the virtual sanctification of ...”

“... town would have brought Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird to mind. Now, the novel’s appeal may have more to do with our conflicting feelings about the trial and how it should have been conducted. In Guterson there are no lecherous journalists chasing exclusives or high-powered lawyers negotiating film rights. The sessions do not take place under the ...”

“... say, ten thousand years, too short a time for any transitional stages to show up as fossils – may stay the same for five to ten million years after that. The process by which a new species is formed is apparently too fast to show up in the fossil record, but too slow to be observed in human experience. ‘No utterly convincing case of true speciation ...”

“... zero tolerance or homeland security, Ferguson’s description of the American way of condemnation may offer some useful pointers to this country’s future. When it comes to the ‘war on terror’, however, Ferguson is reticent. The subject is given less than a page, and though he allows that prosecuting terrorists is important, he makes the puzzling claim ...”

“... in the unclean process, and pulls about the encrusted carcase with a fervour of purpose which may be scientific, but which is nonetheless nasty in the extreme.’ As Luckhurst observes, ‘this report would surely have suggested that Pettigrew was cursed, if such an idea had been available.’ Something must have happened, then, between Pettigrew’s ...”

“... very well done by Anthony Veiller for the Siodmak movie, with uncredited help from John Huston and Richard Brooks. The Siegel film, written by Gene Coon, borrows the plot from the first but transposes scenes and careers: New Jersey, Philadelphia and boxing become Miami, California and car-racing. The stars change too: Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner become John ...”

“... comprehension of what, musically speaking, had been going on. He recounted that Decca’s A&R man, Richard Rowe (who was to become twice famous, once for signing the Rolling Stones and once for turning down the Beatles),made a number of journeys to Scotland in the years following 1950 and became impressed with the financial advantages which might accrue from ...”

“... Americans who left the South as part of the Great Migration, seeking what Isabel Wilkerson (after Richard Wright) calls ‘the warmth of other suns’. In 1958 she arrived in Richmond, California, a town in the East Bay, north of Oakland and Berkeley, whose thriving Black communities maintained cultural and affective ties to Southern culture through ...”

“... Emerson’s poems, Donald Davie’s Thomas Hardy and British Poetry (‘What piffle!’). Richard Ellmann’s Oxford Book of American Verse, Michael Holroyd’s Augustus John, Andrew Motion’s The Poetry of Edward Thomas (‘Am I to suppose this is how he talks to his students, poor sods?’). The fame of other writers Grigson takes as an ...”

“... of profligate oriental luxury circulating in Western Europe. The palace of the Ibelins in Beirut may have been decorated with mosaic and marble. But such conceits were rare even in the richest cities. In rural areas the land was tilled by the natives, mostly Moslems, with some eastern Christians all on the margins of penury. There was hardly any Latin ...”

“... as a precursor, is said to be meaningless except when in opposition to something else, which may be true but is not very defiant. I notice in passing that the wartime New Apocalypse gets a mention, though none of its poets rates an individual entry unless, like Barker and Watkins, they made it elsewhere on their own. Poetry London, the only magazine to ...”

“... friends. But there is another difference between them apart from writing style – indeed, it may explain the difference in style. When Haines left Downing Street, Harold Wilson offered him a knighthood. Haines refused. Bernard Donoughue is now Lord Donoughue. If blandness is Donoughue’s problem, Callaghan’s is whimsy: The Queen held an evening ...”

“... a lot of money. But the more one looks at it, the worse it gets. Behind the apparent simplicity of Richard Branson’s Virgin having bought the Rock lies a more complicated story in which the bulk of the money for the deal comes from Branson’s partner, W.L. Ross and Co, a specialist in distressed companies and undervalued shares (one of Wilbur Ross’s ...”

“... to a tourist: ‘Here’s ancient Rome.’ Both artists are humorists as well as death-haunted. (Richard Wollheim once said to me, apropos The Triumph of Pan, which is in the exhibition, that he did not feel Poussin ever managed the difficult business of laughter in paint. Maybe not: but he was good at showing human beings trying to be funny. He was ...”

“... more than thirty years. He is a modest figure, who has led a life according to his principles. He may well have been naive about some of the people he has met and platforms he has shared, but the idea that he is a communist agent is risible. I suppose we’re in for a lot of this as we get closer to another election. On polling day in 2017 an article appeared ...”