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“... 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 ...”

“... 1910 and located two-thirds of the way between Brondesbury and Kilburn Station and Willesden Green Station on the Metropolitan Line. This was one of several neighbourhoods in North-West London to which prospering Jews tended to migrate from East London in the 1920s and 1930s, the most notorious being Golders ...”

“... Roundheads and jubilant Cavaliers, the explanation for all the cars some mock-battle in Green Park. Note how one passes these far from sheepish figures without a second glance; the kind of extraordinary feature of ordinary life that never gets into a film except as part of the plot.In the evening, read at St Mark’s, Primrose Hill in aid of the ...”

“... 1918, while Maud Gonne remained in prison, Yeats and George rented her house, 73 St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. ‘Should you be released,’ Yeats wrote to her, ‘and allowed to live in Ireland we will move out, which strangers would not.’ The following month, while pregnant with her first child, George caught the influenza virus which was raging ...”

“... its medieval layout. It’s not hard to notice the absence at the heart of the town, a great green open space once occupied by a massive Benedictine abbey. Little of it is left: the remains of two monumental entrance gates plus a lofty detached bell tower, the latter dwarfing the two parish churches that once respectfully flanked an abbey church as large ...”