“... literally, with members of the Russian Parliament. The country is falling apart, and the narrator, long into his career, feels ‘deeply grey of soul’. He is grumpy with his decade ‘with its lazy decadence, ideological vacancy, consumerist ethics, empty narcissisms’. He is getting old. It is evident that his autumn journey is to be considered parallel to ...”

“... General Melchett and Captain Darling. Having been thrown by a horse a few years before, Queen Pamela – ‘Pemmy’ – is in a persistent vegetative state. Her husband is guiltily relieved about this, mainly because he’d been having trouble getting it up for his rather mannish official consort. Now, in utmost secrecy, he has taken a mistress. She is ...”

“... redirection towards the human community recalls a similar powerful movement in Richardson’s Pamela, when her flight from Mr B. turns back towards him under the impulsion of her love. ‘Running away has given me the choice to return,’ says Simon. The final scene of Simon’s reunion with his parents and small brother finds a touching understated ...”

“... it over in his hands as he talks; normally he’d smoke through his lunch hour. He’s wearing long jean shorts and a Homer Simpson T-shirt; his eyes are ringed with yellow-blue shadows. ‘To be honest, this place takes so much out of me,’ he says. ‘It’s hard to pull away when I get home. I certainly swear at home more because I’m allowed to, but ...”

“... and ring fingers (his trademark), each puff drawing attention to the languid elegance of his long, slender, concert-pianist hands. Cigarettes were key props in the Ken Tynan legend assembly-kit, along with the Mickey Mouse watch and effete-aesthete Anthony Blanche outfits he wore at Oxford, and, later, the poolstick collection of headmaster’s canes he ...”

“... and Importers’, based in the Astor House Hotel on Broadway, offered for sale a long list of books from Lamb’s library. For bibliophiles, these volumes seemingly had little to offer – especially from the point of view that had dominated collecting in the heroic age of book sales that accompanied and followed the Napoleonic Wars. The ...”

“... the US with her first husband before meeting Lee and getting a quick annulment. They lived out on Long Island, where Lee presented himself as a dapper Manhattan publishing executive, keeping quiet about exactly what it was he published. He tried to break into magazine writing, broadcasting and advertising, without success. A newspaper comic strip looked as ...”

“... Clementine married Churchill some thought that Venetia and Winston might make a match. She had long brown hair, a deep plummy voice, and was later said by Isaiah Berlin, who met her in Cambridge in the 1930s, to be a ‘handsome, smart, awful woman’. Whatever Venetia’s other callings – in middle age she took up aviation, and she had a passion for ...”

“... some powerful enemies and a reputation as a brutally shady operator. Williams, who himself spent a long life in business and banking before becoming a Labour peer, gives many pages to Aitken’s daring takeovers, well-aimed loans and cunning financial deals. In 1909 his acquisition of several cement plants ended in big trouble as a rival insisted, not without ...”

“... that his loyalties lay elsewhere. Nevertheless, towards the end of the 1960s, Kaminsky began to long for a life out of the shadows. In September 1968, Jeannette, who had joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Guatemala, shot herself in the mouth during a police raid. (She had taken part in the kidnapping of the American ambassador to Guatemala, John ...”

“... destined not for adventure but for tedious marriage or irksome spinsterhood. Any of them might long to dress up as a fetchingly austere Quaker maiden or a wanton Oriental dancing-girl, the better to play a foreign prince’s gilded mistress and feel the illusory freedom of having many men her slaves but none her master – men who would offer ...”

“... Gradgrind will not be an advocate of child-centred learning, and that Luke Skywalker will not stay long on Tatooine. A character called Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt is likely to be able to offer a girl a big house, though ‘Mallinger’ suggests it will come at a price. But there are still mysteries. Even ‘invisible’ non-significative fictional names can ...”

“... intellectual; the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci; the American neoconservatives Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer; and – the maître à penser of the ‘Eurabia genre’ – Gisèle Littman, a British woman of Egyptian-Jewish origin who lives in Switzerland and publishes under the pseudonym Bat Ye’or. (It’s striking how many Eurabia ...”

“... a society is one of the most important services that a state can provide. That service goes a long way towards explaining the apparent paradox that, since the rise of the first state governments in the Fertile Crescent about 5400 years ago, people have more or less willingly (not just under duress) surrendered some of their individual freedoms, accepted ...”

“... late teens; then, a family contact transformed their prospects. Milbourne’s family were dogged, long-lived and enterprising, and are themselves a study in social and geographical mobility. His brother George Marsh rose from a humble navy clerkship to occupy the position once held by Samuel Pepys. In 1755 he secured for Milbourne a senior administrative post ...”