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“... also perhaps because the book was already too well known. The novel itself was published in 2002. (Humphrey Davies translated the book into English in 2004: the film’s success is what has drawn British publishers’ attention.) Al-Aswany was born in Cairo in 1957. He was educated at a French school and learned English at an early age. A graduate course ...”

“... sceptical about the conduct of the war and when pressured refused to send troops. On 1 March 1965, Humphrey Trevelyan, a member of the UK mission at the UN, wrote to Wilson that he had ‘attended a CIA briefing last Friday afternoon’ which had demonstrated ‘pretty conclusively’ that ‘the Americans are in a hopeless position in South Vietnam.’ Wilson ...”

“... Peter Llewelyn Davies, one of J.M. Barrie’s ‘Lost Boys’, in later life called Peter Pan ‘that terrible masterpiece’. Brigid Brophy, having reread Little Women and its sequels, dried her eyes and blown her nose, resolved that ‘the only honourable course was to come out into the open and admit that the dreadful books are masterpieces ...”

“... comes a beautifully contrived set of parodies of traditional English ghost stories. Robertson Davies (author of many plays and novels, The Manticore being the best-known over here) has been Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto, and his High Spirits is a compilation of the ghost stories he used to offer, instead of an after-dinner ...”

“... to determine the tone of the presentation, the rhythm and contrasts of each evening’s schedule? Humphrey Carpenter’s detailed account suggests that the mandarins of the mid-Forties got the Third Programme right straight off. The BBC’s Director-General, William Haley, credited himself with having created the network by two decisions. Programmes should ...”

“... in impersonations of the boxer Dominico Patrono, the actor Myron Chianti, the musicologist Sir Humphrey Price-Davies, the conductor Sir Nigel Twitt-Thornwaite. Part of his very expensive self-consciousness was a way of keeping an eye on his own tics and foibles and somehow indulging the volatility of his usually ...”

“... when one’s baby-sitter is a cabinet minister one realises one is really old! 21 May 1997. Howard Davies is appointed chairman-designate of ‘SuperSIB’ (or, as it is later christened by Gordon Brown, the Financial Services Authority), as much to his surprise as everyone else’s. He had been on his way to South America in his capacity as deputy governor of ...”

“... was imprisoned for debt in Bedford jail in 1570. In an effort to improve his fortunes he joined Humphrey Gilbert’s expedition to the Netherlands in 1572, and spent the next couple of years shuttling between England and the Low Countries. Several battles later, most of which were disasters, he was suspected by both the Dutch and English of having ...”

“... well as its extraordinary freshness, had an enormous influence on composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle. All these late works – right up to Stravinsky’s final masterpiece, Requiem Canticles (1966), which has the wintry radiance of late poems by Wallace Stevens – owe their existence to a significant extent to the presence of ...”