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“... by the new kinds of social and aesthetic domination, and by such bogus concepts as Clive Bell’s ‘significant form’. As Diarist, she had an assiduous zest for social goings-on of any kind, and for the places where things were happening. But she had the snob’s fatal lack of independence, of the ability, essential to most good writers, to get on ...”

“... war and the causes of war, a theme which was to her a kind of posthumous discussion with Julian Bell about his decision to go to Spain. She suspected his motives and could not find them altogether admirable. Nicolson’s verdict is that ‘she tried to be rational about war, but her emotion got the better of her logic.’ Her arguments about the connections ...”

“... the point of being able to identify with the gloriously ‘tragic and fated’ love of a Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, enacted in the film of the book. But the real book is a kind of bible of arrested development, as must have been perceived by L.P. Hartley, no grown-up himself. Love, sex and adult tenderness are despised as rubbish in it, even while ...”

“... thing he was hosting. Who was there? Oh, you know, the usual crew: Tennessee Williams, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, and Hemingway’s great chum, the one he called ‘the Kraut’: Marlene Dietrich. ‘You could have knocked me over with a pin,’ Styron wrote to his aunt Edith, ‘when Leo took me over to meet Dietrich and she took my cold clammy ...”

“... just get on with the job. 31 March. Jehovah’s Witnesses blitz the street and when they ring the bell I lie low until the coast is clear. I imagine they’re used to this sort of response and even when someone is unwary enough to open them the door the exchange is generally pretty curt. In one house in the street, though, they are assured of a warmer ...”