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“... The lowest note, in this particular key, comes in ‘How Was It, Really?’ We are introduced to Don Fairbairn and his second wife: ‘In their present circle of friends, the main gossip was of health and death, whereas once the telephone wires had buzzed with word of affairs and divorces.’ Near the story’s end, ...”

“... the sounds and smells of those who invade private space. Theo Faron, the disengaged Oxford don with his ‘empty inviolate house’, reprises Kate Miskin whose great fear, in A Taste for Death, is that her grandmother should came to share her hard-won flat, her hideaway. (Both books have painful scenes where a geriatric is ‘half-carried’ to the ...”

“... a musicologist of considerable importance, as well as a knowledgeable gardener and a resourceful cook. Since she also seems to have been a good and sensitive friend it is fair to conclude that she was altogether a rare and admirable person. Many pages of the diaries now published are about her love for Valentine Ackland, the woman with whom she lived for ...”

“... And Shakespeare seems to endow Ephesus with double identities wherever possible. Adriana’s cook is called both Nell and Luce; the abbey is a sanctuary, but just behind it lies ‘the place of death and sorry execution’; the currency is of three sorts – guilders, marks and ducats; the courtesan with whom Antipholus of Ephesus intends simply to dine ...”

“... with an assortment of houses in England and Italy, a magnificent Rolls-Royce and a superlative cook, Berners was enjoying a glittering social life, the friend of great hostesses, of Diaghilev, and of the Sitwells, Huxleys and Nicolsons. He worked at music when he felt like it, though only then, and his music to a Diaghilev ballet, The Triumph of ...”

“... Man and the Battle for Rio, a biography of Antônio Francisco Bonfim Lopes, known as Nem, a drug don in Rocinha, now serving a 16-year sentence in a maximum security prison. Glenny conducted ten interviews with Nem, lasting a total of 28 hours; he talked to his friends and family, the police, senior politicians and journalists. Glenny uses Nem’s rise ...”

“... had put it, became manifest in their behaviour. Warner was a serial homebody: an accomplished cook, gardener and seamstress. Ackland did most of the heavy lifting: ‘I lean more and more on her trousers,’ Warner declared. For the time being, at least, the discharge of libido flowed in a single direction only, although Warner was on one occasion ...”

“... On another occasion, he visits his uncle’s grave in the company of that grandee’s former cook. The cook produces a small jam-jar of rum, which he slowly pours over the marble slab: ‘Commander, this zabaglione is made exactly as you liked it,’ he murmurs. Growing up in these feudal surroundings, Segre was ...”

“... continue her work. (It was the first time anyone in Oxford had even thought of such a thing.) The cook, cleaner, housekeeper and nanny – and later, scholarships to Eton – helped, too, of course. A memorable photograph of Hodgkin in 1947, aged just 37, beaming and surrounded by her trio of tiny children, turns out to have been taken on the occasion of her ...”

“... Abbas into opening commercial relations with the Christian princes of Europe – including the cook, the barber, the under-secretary, and the nephew of Sherley’s Persian counterpart – converted to Catholicism in Italy and Spain. The nephew, Uruch Beg, ended his life in Spain, where he went by the name Don Juan of ...”

“... At one end there was an open kitchen, looking out on the garden at eye-level, and here Hetta would cook delicious dinners and William his horrible soup. The main body of the room was dominated by a large rectangular table which was the communal ‘hearth’ and served for everything. Hetta presided at the top end, nearest the kitchen, and William had his ...”

“... of Commons. Even so, he seemed a fount of good sense and sophisticated wit to the young Trinity don just off the boat from Dublin. So did Pope, ‘a man of excellent wit and learning’ despite being a papist. Berkeley writes to tell him how taken he is with the magic and ‘inexplicable beauties’ of The Rape of the Lock. In a heady year or so in England ...”

“... sacrifice and heroic failure. Not quite in the spirit of Alan Bennett’s paradox-mongering media don in The History Boys (‘Those who had been genuinely caught napping by the attack on Pearl Harbor were the Japanese’), Figes suggests that ‘the charge was in some ways a success’ and that Balaklava might even have been a British victory if the pursuit ...”

“... him during his final illness. It is amazing to think of those ornaments of the golden age of the don, seemingly happy to give unlimited time and hospitality to such a difficult guest. These days we would be more inclined to shrink away, fearing the disruption of RAE deadlines and unmet administrative demands, not to mention the rebellion of family ...”

“... fashioned dust-to-dust-type dust. I crush a little morphine up and sift it in. I add some water, cook it all down in a spoon, draw it up through a hormone needle, roll my sleeve. I stanch the blood with velveteen. Now I’m on the flower-print couch. Now I’m thinking, is that the morphine, or is that my mother? Something is setting beautiful fires up ...”