“... no botanist, no philosopher of wild places. He’s away before the dog accompanists are let into a green oasis that operates like the Marshalsea Prison: if you are inside when the bell sounds, you stay the night. Low-level flats, from an era of less boastful regeneration, are set back from the road behind cushions of coarse grass, teardrop flower-beds planted ...”

“... courage to be assessed?Williams’s story ‘One Arm’ (1948) is about a promising boxer called Oliver who has an amputation after an accident and starts to sell his body. He isn’t particularly shocked to learn his ‘commodity value’, but what is referred to as his ‘speechless self’ moves towards destruction. Drunk, he kills a stockbroker on his ...”

“... sitting down occasionally by the wayside to dip into it.’ My great-grandfather soon discovered Oliver Goldsmith and Thomas De Quincey. ‘The beauty of the prose poems and neatness of the humour was such as I had never before met with.’ The practical mysteries of propagation and grafting now cohabited with another less focused compulsion, the urge to ...”

“... who were, in any case, in decline. This was evidenced by their use of contraception, according to Oliver St John Gogarty, who said, during the 1929 Séanad debate on the Censorship of Publications Act that ‘the English government has practically told the unemployed that they should not cumber the earth.’ The Act would help the Irish poor avoid this fate ...”

“... troops’ – a free-floating relish for combat. The Supreme Court justice and Civil War veteran Oliver Wendell Holmes outlined this ‘soldier’s faith’ to a Harvard audience more than a century ago. Civilians, he said, might succumb to ‘the temptations of wallowing ease’ – but not men like himself, who had fought. ‘We have shared the ...”

“... starting with a procession of friends, colleagues and banners before we made our way to Golders Green crematorium, the keynote speech given by Mick O’Riordan, then general secretary of the Irish Communist Party. The second took place some months later in Dublin, where I took his ashes to be buried in a plot of unconsecrated ground in Mount Pleasant ...”

“... or an obsessively meticulous rendering of an obsessively meticulous New Yorker cover by Jenny Oliver – or most common of all, a confession. In those days, the New Yorker was also a kind of Miss Lonelyhearts. At first, I had thought that the woman was one of those people, and in a way you could say she had become one. The receptionist told me her ...”

“... away in secondhand anthologies. His life as obscure as that of Beckett’s Murphy. Corso’s sage green novel, The American Express, written for the Olympia Press in Paris, must be the chastest item in their catalogue. A whimsical fable decorated with doodles that could have been done by Stevie Smith. Mindfield, a chunky gathering of Corso’s work, was ...”

“... these words says, in effect, big feet or not, she nonetheless moves with startling grace, like Oliver Hardy doing one of his wondrously light soft-shoe routines in movies such as The Music Box (1932) and Way out West (1937), or Jackie Gleason skipping with delight. ‘Somebody Stole My Gal’ reverses this course as Waller withholds his affecting touch ...”

“... them. It is easy to argue about the uncertain Irishness of certain writers. Was Sterne Irish? Was Oliver Goldsmith Irish? Was Robert Tressell Irish? Is Iris Murdoch Irish? But the argument about who was gay and who was not and how we know is more difficult. How can someone be gay if, as in the case of Gogol, there is no direct evidence? Yet if you trawl ...”

“... the CIA’s clandestine officers were too timid. He preferred the type represented by his friend Oliver North. Over time, Casey’s position hardened into CIA dogma, which its agents, protected by secrecy from ever having their ignorance exposed, enforced in every way they could. The agency resolutely refused to help choose winners and losers among the ...”

“... Braised Sultanas, Warm Avocados and Lobster Glazed with Béarnaise Sauce, Medallions of Lamb with Green Lentils and Bacon. No Krazy Mixed-Up Salt here. In the US edition of Dr Arthur Agatston’s immensely popular South Beach plan, in which ‘good carbs’ are permitted in moderation, photographs of Miami celebrity chefs adorn their contributions to the ...”

“... with others and the world. Autism was seen as outside the realm of regular human functioning. When Oliver Sacks read Temple Grandin’s 1986 memoir, Emergence: Labelled Autistic, he thought Grandin’s co-author, Margaret Scariano, must have written it. ‘The autistic mind, it was supposed at that time, was incapable of self-understanding and understanding ...”

“... of the Union in an election where he saw off more fancied candidates – including Damian Green and Alan Duncan – who were too busy squabbling to notice the threat he posed. Philip May presided over the Union in the spirit of his girlfriend. For his farewell debate he chose the topic of the professionalisation of sport and invited Theresa back to ...”

“... long and distinguished career. A Little History of Poetry canters from Gilgamesh and Homer to Mary Oliver and Les Murray in three hundred pages with a breezy sense of mission, assuming in the reader no previous acquaintance with the subject (‘Confessional poetry is poetry that reveals personal confidences, especially relating to mental illness and ...”