“... Even fruit could not escape his portentousness. He liked apples on account of their ‘snow-white meat and ruddy cover’, but it was ‘a metaphysical appetite, for I do not care for their taste’.Schwartz sometimes worried that his intellectualism was willed rather than authentic. In his autobiographical notes, he described ‘trying as before ...”

“... Oddingley Grange on Trench Lane, whose châtelaine was a Mrs White, aunt of Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Robinson, commanding officer of the Royal Artillery 67th Field Regiment, Territorial Army. Lt Col Robinson approved, and a gruff handshake transformed my father into a second lieutenant, though he had to serve his time as a failed schoolteacher until June ...”

“... I was planning to do instead might have seemed inappropriate. On the train back I run into Jon Snow, who is returning from Bradford where he has been making a programme about the decline of the city. I note that at Kings Cross, unlike me, he goes home by Tube, whereas after the rigours of Nidderdale I feel I’m entitled to a cab. Still, as Anthony Powell ...”

“... When Mason performs his dying fall as a Byronic gunman, gate clutching, staggering across the snow towards the lights of the police cars, he is in Haggerston Park, E2. Another film, The Long Good Friday, arrived in 1979, so pertinent in its exposure of the coming land-piracy that it seemed prophetic. It was efficiently directed by John MacKenzie, but the ...”

“... rivals, including an Irish horse called Yahoo. Still, when Desert Orchid ploughed through mud and snow to cross the line just ahead of Yahoo, in the most exciting horse race I have ever seen, we all stood and cheered. It was a disastrous result for the bookies, who lost a fortune to the ignorant housewives, and it wasn’t much better for our regulars, who ...”