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“... In Martin Scorsese’s Casino, Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) remarks that Las Vegas is about ‘selling people dreams for cash’ and, in a memorable elaboration of this cliché, that ‘it does for us what Lourdes does for hunchbacks and cripples.’ Much the same has been said about the culture of cinema, and how Scorsese’s film stands in relation to its subject is an interesting question ...”

“... universe, another radical and not quite recognisably Tory disruptor would be at May’s elbow: Nick Timothy, her former co-chief of staff. From the summer of 2016 until the late spring of 2017, the UK was more or less run by May and her two main advisers: Timothy, the supposedly visionary strategist, and Fiona Hill, who was more street-smart and ...”

“... link arms. Still, it makes a change from brawling over toilet rolls.26 March. Around six Nick Hytner rings, highly excited. Piers Wenger (controller of BBC drama) has just rung him saying that though current restrictions make mounting any TV programmes difficult, he thinks it may be possible to do a new version of the Talking Heads monologues from ...”

“... issued from 2012 onwards. Just seven months later, in July last year, Cable announced that he and Nick Clegg had agreed not to proceed with the sale. (As secretary of state with ultimate responsibility for universities, the decision whether or not to sell rests with Cable.) Not that Osborne and the Treasury have been dissuaded. Osborne announced in the Autumn ...”

“... to Amsterdam, subsisting on boiled roots and the word of God. Even mature figures such as Robert Browne, who in the 1580s lent his name to Ainsworth’s brethren (‘Brownists’), wavered in and out of conformity as conscience and courage dictated. It helped their enemies that some puritans were not only flaky but mad. William Hacket, a maltster, boasted of ...”

“... by this is meant that they know nothing at first hand about life on the dole, on the road, in the nick or on the make. Nor, however, do those to whose lips or keyboards the phrase repeatedly springs. A judge no doubt knows as little about a journalist’s or a plumber’s life as a plumber or a journalist knows about a judge’s life, or for that matter as ...”

“... as good as advertisements cracked them up to be. 7 April. After filming An Englishman Abroad Coral Browne gave the extravagant fur coat she wore in the film to the National Theatre, partly for sentimental reasons but partly, too, because times were changing and it was getting almost unwearable. Hoping to be able to use it in their current production the West ...”

“... house opposite. Eventually she decides there is ‘a nice space’ outside 62 and plumps for that. Nick Tomalin and I heave away at the back of the van but while she is gracefully indicating that she is moving off (for all of the fifteen feet) the van doesn’t budge. ‘Have you let the hand brake off?’ Nick Tomalin ...”

“... and saw himself as ‘a spirit that was once a man’. The white pyramid depicted by Hablot Browne in his engraving of the churchyard is beyond our reach. The author of sensationalist ‘yellow peril’ fictions, Sax Rohmer, had a particular interest in this pyramid. It was known to his evil genius, Fu Manchu, with his fiendish plots and intimacy with ...”