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“... the fetish of modern Dickensian veneration and are reproduced with extraordinary redundancy. Harry Stone’s makes the fifth set of the working notes for Edwin Drood. His is the most attractive set by far, but not even the most finicky Dickensian could claim that on the face of it there is a crying need for an edition de luxe of these materials. The ...”

“... with the endless weathers Passing above, and the high apartments Shadowing it. Down here On the stone bench, of an autumn morning, I felt for a moment, the heat of sun on my face As it angled around the corner Out of sight. My patch of sky Went blue then, or grey, And I went inside. But it was always there, The garden. At its centre A tree, a plum tree As I ...”

“... I went up to Oxford, one of the liveliest and most provocative lecturers in history was Lawrence Stone of Wadham. He was already a controversial figure who had, as we all knew, crossed swords with Hugh Trevor-Roper over the state of the Elizabethan aristocracy and with Geoffrey Elton over the question of Tudor despotism. ...”

“... they do. I’m not really sure. Send out the death squads I expect. When I say ‘we’, I mean Harry and me. Harry is the other car-park attendant in charge of our domain. We’re co-dictators. He runs it one half of the week, and I run it the rest. He’s in his fifties, retired. I hardly ever see him, since when he’s ...”

“... the books as a little thin, a little cheap (this would be a mistake). It is possible too that the Harry Potter films, as they grew larger, made the books smaller. The eight movies based on the seven books grossed $7.7 billion; and with that came the merchandise, and the use of Harry’s face to launch a thousand ...”

“... Young Harry Potter’s parents are dead. So far, so good: many of the heroes and heroines of the classics of children’s literature are orphans, while others have invisible, unmentionable or irrelevant parents. The sorrow of grieving, not to mention the terror of helplessness, is quickly glossed over in favour of the joy of a fantasised freedom ...”

“... speakers. Not that she listened to them, she’d be gabbing in general about different kinds of stone. Stone and rock. Lizzie Frink used to shampoo me before the cut – it was always a ten bob tip for Frinkie and a quid for the Hep. They both took it hard when I switched to Tony Caro’s place ... Of course the first ...”

“... subject of violence are particularly murky. ‘Penance’ was the word Eastwood used in a Rolling Stone interview in relation to Unforgiven, his last film as star and director and one which brought him his first Oscar and a new respectability in the movie world. In conversation Eastwood made the fim sound more like a prayer then a Western. It was as if he was ...”

“... three parts. So is One for My Baby. Readers may recall that the narrator of Man and Boy was called Harry, and he was a producer on a TV talk-show. His wife, Gina, left him and went to work in Tokyo. The narrator of One for My Baby is called Alfie (Parsons seems to be paying homage to characters played by Michael Caine). Alfie’s wife is called Rose. Rose dies ...”

“... replacements and extensions followed. Then, mainly in the 1920s, the street was rebuilt in stone. Complaints about the new Regent Street have rumbled on ever since. The first substantial breach – it set the Imperial Edwardian tone of much that was to follow – was made by the back elevation of Norman Shaw’s Piccadilly Hotel. ‘It’s a grim ...”

“... a Western. FDR was known to admire Myrna Loy and Ike to enjoy watching shoot-’em-ups; underdog Harry Truman had been inspired by Frank Capra’s 1948 State of the Union and, as the son of a sometime Hollywood mogul, Kennedy was groomed for glamorous stardom. But no American president before Nixon had ever made a public pronouncement based on his experience ...”

“... estates. What fascinated me, as a scion of the Aberdeen middle class, was how time after time Harry Jack’s tastes, as recorded humorously by his son, were precisely opposite to my family’s. Harry ‘clung to ... a wide range of prejudices and mini-bigotries which included heroes from history, toilet articles and ...”

“... authors, the novelist and scientist ‘William Cooper’: he was born in 1910 and brought up (as Harry Hoff) in the town of Crewe in Cheshire. Seniors in his family were determined chapel-goers, but Cooper-Hoff looks back at his childhood, over eighty years, with the quiet smile of a tolerant agnostic: his light, amused impressions illustrate the way England ...”

“... at most, can be taken. (There are two monotypes here, feathery, slightly blurred abstracts by Harry Bertoia, the sculptor and furniture designer.) Etching a plate is very like making a drawing. A needle scratching through resist is like a sharp pen being dragged across paper. If you combine it with drypoint – scratching vigorously enough to throw up a ...”

“... Heinrich-Heine-Strasse to Goetheplatz, and then along Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse past the Kunsthalle Harry Graf Kessler. The space in front of the museum is Jorge-Semprún-Platz. Weimar receives several million visitors each year, most of them German. Generations have paid their respects to the shades of Goethe and Schiller; a horse-drawn carriage stands ready ...”