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“... for ‘readable’, ‘enjoyable’ books that ‘zip along’. But I felt some sympathy for Chris Mullin when he complained that the London literary world – ‘those who know best’ – had told him and his fellow panellists, from the outset, which books they ‘must’ include on the shortlist, and had reacted with fury when they were ignored. I ...”

“... the Cripps papers were closed to other scholars. The result was that the unofficial biographies by Chris Bryant (1997) and Simon Burgess (1999) – whose quality Clarke graciously acknowledges – were written without access to Cripps’s personal papers. This was unfortunate. In general, Clarke writes, the exclusion blighted rather than fostered ...”

“... as the Shelley of the Thirties, he was later described by Geoffrey Grigson as the ‘Rupert Brooke of the Depression’.) Isherwood, he grudgingly conceded, could claim ‘accomplishment’. Isherwood returned the tepid compliment, 12 years later, with a script for the Tony Richardson production of The Loved One. The movie regularly makes the lists of ...”

“... by Henry VIII in 1538, whereupon its five-acre precinct became a prime piece of Tudor real estate. Chris Laoutaris’s Shakespeare and the Countess gives a remarkably detailed account of its residents in the 1590s, some of them very distinguished, and of their efforts to exclude one who would become more distinguished than any of them. Blackfriars is an area ...”

“... sums as an endorser of various products, flies his own jet, and married (then divorced) movie star Brooke Shields. I still think either Sedgman, Laver or Drobny (to say nothing of Agassi’s erstwhile brother-in-law Gonzales) could have taken the King of Las Vegas handily, his amazing speed, anticipation and racket control notwithstanding. The core of ...”

“... The land, England within its ‘natural’ boundaries, is ultimately the key to everything. Rupert Brooke did not suppose that some far corner of a foreign field would be for ever the back streets of Walsall. As that very effective exponent of One Nation Conservatism, Stanley Baldwin, put it in 1924: ‘To me England is the country, and the country is ...”

“... sole franchise. Spirit has been left to the Official Millennium Poet. Simon Armitage, according to Chris Meade, director of the Poetry Society, ‘seems just right to us because he has lightness of touch and has written recently about the universe and the stars’. Essentially the Dome is showbiz. Old showbiz, resting showbiz, between projects showbiz: David ...”