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“... a second baronet: ‘Very obscure,’ says Sebastian, whose sister was not at first Cordelia, but Bridget, the name of Waugh’s devout sister-in-law. Sebastian himself was then merely ‘Honourable’, as Waugh had not yet elevated Lord Marchmain from an earl to a marquis. Hooper was at first called Haydon after a general Waugh disliked. Julia’s golden ...”

“... in the 1930s was ‘a cesspool of unemployment’, in the words of the trade union activist Ken Hill – Jamaicans sometimes marched through Kingston just so that they could be arrested, jailed and fed. Unemployment, seasonal work and poor education were widespread, and wages had hardly increased in the hundred years since emancipation. ‘[W]e are the ...”

“... disapproved of him, he went to Paris, aged 17, and lived on a secret allowance from his mother. Bridget Astor, wife of David Astor, former editor of the Observer, remembers his being ‘always considered a very glamorous figure around Torquay’. His uncle introduced him to osteopathy, seeing him as a clever drifter. Ward went to America, loved the ...”

“... same time (and like any other celebrity) having put himself in the way of it in the first place. Bridget goes round pretty much at my pace, Rupert as always slower and taking more in, noting the tears brimming in Lucrezia’s eyes, for instance, and how she has had to half slip herself out of her heavily brocaded dress the more easily to stab herself. He ...”

“... serve, if only for the announcement of the season in the New Year.As an early Christmas present Bridget has given us a cow creamer she has made. Unglazed, it is chunky and solid and striped black and white like a bovine zebra. It’s a delightful object, a convict cow, and could she be bothered to make more and market them I’m sure they would sell for a ...”

“... a film in which suborned natives (expendable extras) drag a paddle-steamer over a steep hill in order to get around an inconvenient bend in the river, the point being to bring Caruso, one of the gods of opera, to an upstream trading post. An insane achievement mirrored in the rebranding of the Dome, after its long and expensive limbo, as the O2 ...”