“... of one who finds life difficult. The heartbreak he suffered over the death of his wife Tetty (Elizabeth Porter) can be caught even though it is expressed only indirectly. There are no letters directly describing her death, and the letters do not reflect the agony of the private prayers (which we also have), but any of Johnson’s references to his loss ...”

“... Seventy-four years ago a viral pandemic began in America, most likely on a pig farm in Iowa. Fifteen months later it had killed over eighteen million people, 1 per cent of the world’s population, as many as died in two world wars, almost ten times as many as have died in a decade of Aids. The virus, transmitted by airborne mucus and saliva, spread via coughs and sneezes ...”

“... Jackson (400 pp., £9.95, 1986, 0 85635 677 8). First Awakenings: The Early Poems, edited by Elizabeth Friedmann, Alan Clark and Robert Nye (280 pp., £14.95, 1992, 0 85635 985 8). Progress of Stories (380 pp., £9.95, 1986, 0 85635 678 6). Lives of Wives (328 pp., £12.95, 1988, 0 85635 748 ...”

“... Morrison ... was Secretary of State to the Lord Monjoy, our chief Governour, in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,’ says Sheridan, so he ‘had the best oportunity, of knowing the State of this Nation at that time’. An Irish rebellion led by ringleaders of English extraction, a pattern which seems to have remained consistent in Irish history to the time of ...”

“... to some other occasion to reflect on what this leap consisted in.’ Or there’s the opening of Elizabeth Costello (2003):There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge. People solve such problems ...”

“... more serious business of having fun. Often, on encountering Mew’s children, I’m reminded of Elizabeth Bishop’s affection for a short story she came across in the New York Times, composed by an eight-year-old: ‘I told my little brother when you die you cannot breathe and he did not say a word. He just kept on playing.’The deaths of Mew’s little ...”

“... horrible, and I almost felt that I did not want to go back – till, of course, I remembered Elizabeth Arden, my flat and the Savoy Grill.’ Reading both books in Liberia made me wonder whether hers isn’t the better. Journey without Maps is solemn and erudite; Barbara Greene’s version of the trek is clearer-eyed: ‘I knew perfectly well,’ she ...”

“... the last years of Johnson’s life the household also accommodated Barber’s young English wife, Elizabeth, née Ball, whom he married in 1773, and the first two of their three children. Betsy Barber was a great favourite of Johnson, and even wrung a compliment from Mrs Thrale, who thought her ‘eminently pretty’, though some others – notably Hawkins ...”

“... murders of William the Silent and Henri III and Henri IV of France; the attempt to poison Queen Elizabeth; the numerous plots, in both his kingdoms, on the life of James VI and I – for threats and rumours of regicide to place nations on recurrent high alert. In life and art alike, there was a special frisson to death by poison. In 1612 the death of ...”

“... For Eggers, the very worst thing you could be is a member of a club you didn’t found yourself. Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of the depression memoir Prozac Nation (1994), went to Harvard and wrote for Seventeen magazine, but emphasises how ill-suited she was for such places, and how unimpressed she was by what she saw there. ‘I’d spent all my time in high ...”

“... a bunch of proto-Brexiteers – Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Chris Skidmore and Elizabeth Truss – slapdashed a manifesto together called Britannia Unchained, the gist of which is that the British have become squalid, lazy gits, getting fat and studying useless subjects like psychology and desiring only to be footballers or pop stars. If we ...”

“... tend to take emphatic pride in their nation’s carriers: the Royal Navy refers to HMS Queen Elizabeth, launched in 2014, as ‘4.5 acres of floating sovereign power’. The US has eleven full-size fleet carriers, more than the rest of the world combined. It wasn’t always so. Japan had ten carriers by 1940 and Japanese admirals pioneered the carrier ...”

“... chewing-gum dispenser) than from the work of his predecessors in art. As it happened, his sister Elizabeth was thought to be the artistic member of the family. She was sent to take painting classes with Edward Hopper, the son of the man who owned the local dry goods store. Joseph preferred to stay at home, immersed in Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers ...”

“... all the claptrap that was explicit by the time Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reached the screen with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. The play and movie were both big successes; Williams lived on them for decades. But the struggle over the third act had been painful, and his friendship with Kazan was never quite the same. He said once that the rewriting ...”

“... gate’. Aldington and H.D. had liked to imagine that their marriage resembled that of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but it’s rare for two poets to have a happy marriage. He tried to justify his actions by reproaching H.D., telling her that what he perceived as her ‘ardour for perfection’ was making her deeply unhappy; he told her that his ...”