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“... for the official photograph. He was brilliant, 33, and the world was his geological oyster. (Roger Osborne notes dryly that Honoré Lantenois, the Director of the Service Géologique de l’Indochine, was on the very edge of the same picture, ‘as far from the centre as it is possible to be’.) The photograph encapsulates the way in which the old ...”

“... Christie is supreme. Thus in what I take to be the most famous of detective novels, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Ackroyd’s secretary hears his employer’s voice coming from his study: ‘the calls on my purse have been so frequent of late that I fear it is impossible for me to accede to your request.’ Poirot sees that nobody would talk like this ...”

“... this account a token figure rather than – as she increasingly seems – a key player. Not since Roger Fry’s two Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912 had the art world been so divided. American Abstract Expressionism aroused violently opposed responses. ‘I was instantly elated by the size, energy, originality, economy and inventive daring of ...”

“... But the neighbouring streets still provide the decor of deprivation for photographers such as Roger Mayne: scorched curtains, three-legged prams, free-range, snot-rich urchins and, as the architect Peter Barber recalled with nostalgie de la boue, ‘an elderly woman who used to stand at her gate all day long and everybody knew what was going on on the ...”

“... suffer the indignity of having his phone tapped. The lessons of court life are quickly learned. As Roger Morris, one of Kissinger’s original bright young men, put it, in describing the irresistible rise of Al Haig: ‘ “Al was the ultimate special assistant,” he says. “There’s a whole culture in the Defence Department and in the White House. The ...”

“... the Nash brothers, Alf White? Get your PR in first, before you pick up a shooter from ‘Dukie’ Osborne, if you’re into immortality. Hire your Joe Haines, like any other self-respecting tycoon. Give the legend a bit of a massage. It could be the difference between being a statistic in a Channel 4 filler and being reincarnated by Richard Burton. Only ...”

“... he was the reactionary figure at the Royal Court and was well known for his opposition to John Osborne, my hero.Duncan was involved in that post-Eliot ‘revival’ of poetic drama.Yes, he wanted more verse drama. He also thought that drama should be on some major theme which, indeed, mine was. My play was also laid out like verse, though it wasn’t in ...”

“... housing stock and left councils to pick up the pieces and deal with the housing shortage. George Osborne did more harm than any British politician for a generation when he cut rent revenues and imposed austerity measures. In her rush to be sympathetic, May must have forgotten the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which did yet more to undermine councils in ...”