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“... Pierpont Morgan has never said “I” in his life.’ Strouse would agree. ‘He was, as Henry Adams said of Theodore Roosevelt, “pure act”.’ But Schlegel goes on to say, ‘if you could pierce through him, you’d find panic and emptiness in the middle’, which Strouse wouldn’t say of Morgan. He may lack any very complicated internal life, or the ...”

“... Stillness and Speed: My Story by Dennis Bergkamp (Arsenal striker, 1995-2006); Addicted by Tony Adams (Arsenal centre-back, 1983-2002); and, now, Arsène Wenger’s My Life in Red and White. Arsène Wenger on the touchline at the Emirates Stadium, 29 March 2014. The Premier League has come a long way since it started nearly thirty years ago. Revenues ...”

“... and hence a rather coherent set of historical and cultural values’. At the other end is Bernard Berenson, a necessary validating agent in the process whereby American money and European art produced (through what Henry Adams called ‘the universal solvent of money valuations’) a portable culture for a new ...”

“... for himself, trying on various styles, none of them very convincing: sub-Van Dongen easing towards Bernard Buffet; then, later, abstraction. In the 1950s he hung out with Picasso and Cocteau (which photographers didn’t?) and alongside some snaps of Picasso in his trademark pose of bare-chested bravado, Lartigue took a wonderful shot of the back of his left ...”

“... site of his first (and only) spate of serious archival research and of his meeting with Margaret Adams, the well-to-do music student who would become his first wife. Ambition and strong recommendations won Taylor a teaching post at Manchester in 1930, where he wrote his first books on Continental diplomacy, began reviewing for the Guardian, played a minor ...”

“... a kaleidoscope of groups stretching from Ian Paisley’s branch of the Unionists through to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and whoever they officially or unofficially represent. Typically, this ‘peaceful solution’ seems to involve shuffling Northern Ireland into a closer relationship with the Irish Republic and trying to get the spectrum of political ...”

“... trying to collaborate on a stage piece for the Mermaid Theatre. I can no longer remember how Bernard Miles came up with this very bad idea, or why we both agreed to try it. I had known Empson a bit since his return from China, we had lunch and sometimes met as neighbours in Hampstead, but there was an element of unease in the relationship, which I think ...”

“... clear-eyed way he refused to substitute one allegiance for another, refused to fantasise, as Henry Adams did or Walter Pater, the substitution for the present of some past. He was as detached from what he cherished as from what he criticised. Neither the present nor the past struck Santayana as susceptible of improvement. The laughter in his books is seldom ...”

“... In 1973​ , when George Balanchine was asked by his biographer Bernard Taper to appraise the previous decade of his life, he replied: ‘It’s all in the programmes.’ He meant that the most important information was already onstage: in the new ballets he made, the old ones he revived and the dancers he chose to perform them ...”

“... following morning the building was a blackened shell.’Afterwards a telegram arrived from George Bernard Shaw: ‘You must be delighted. Congratulations. It will be a tremendous advantage to have a proper modern building. There are a number of other theatres I should like to see burned down.’ Shaw had opened the final season in the old building, proposing ...”

“... disco. Jones and Kantonen write about musicians and producers – from Giorgio Moroder to Patrick Adams – as well as influential record labels (like Casablanca and Salsoul) and clubs. Early in the book the authors make an effort to distance themselves from Abba and the Bee Gees (a strategy recommended to all serious advocates of disco) – those regrettable ...”

“... it should have some ‘chastening influence … on the self-confidence of mankind’, and Henry Adams likened the news to the foundering of the Republican Party: ‘the sum and triumph of civilisation … our greatest achievement sinks at a touch … Nature jeers at us for our folly.’ The sinking of the Titanic very quickly seemed freighted with ...”