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“... I had become an admirer. Gaitskell was dead, and the revisionists needed a champion. George Brown was too unreliable, and Roy Jenkins too remote. Crosland seemed to be the man. After all, he was the high priest of revisionism. He had charted its course in happier days. Who better to lead it through the storms that followed Gaitskell’s death? For most ...”

“... of the English Department. Davenport was keen on the idea but the then governor of California, Pat Brown, Jerry’s father, cut the university’s funding, putting paid to the possibility of new appointments. Davenport ended up teaching at Haverford College in Pennsylvania for two years and then took a job at the University of Kentucky, ‘the remotest offer ...”

“... to be as formidable as Thatcher had been, a steely woman in a world of wobbly men. Even Gordon Brown, with his ceaseless personal ambition, believed that politicians only get a few chances to make a lasting difference and he longed to take the opportunities on offer as effectively as she had. The fact that they all failed in these lofty goals shows how ...”

“... sensing nets, will fold their wings in half and seem to the untrained eye to be just a few more brown and withered leaves clinging to the tree. But they’re not: If you sing a sad song loud enough, the boys on those torpedo boats can hear you under the sea. Songs need listeners, and people do too: like the parrots in ‘Parrot, Fever’ (the first ...”

“... of her: ‘She was sitting in a corner, sulking and biting her lower lip – long blonde hair, brown eyes. Roman-striped skirt. As if it were a movie, she was glamorous and aloof. The girl I was talking to said: “That’s Bunny Lang. I’d like to give her a good slap.”’ If Lang’s truncated life ever was made into a movie, this scene might open ...”

“... he said, ‘not 15 pence nor 15 farthings’ to call his own. It was then that Clare received a bill for 15 shillings from a Mr Thompson who kept a bookshop in Stamford High Street. He was selling up and wanted to settle his accounts. Clare now had a lucky break. The new owner of the bookstore was a young man called Edward Drury, whose father was a printer ...”

“... proceeded to reel in without the catch putting up too much of a struggle. After his eldest son, Bill, had become a Tory MP, Waldorf began to see the Observer as David’s inheritance and Tom Jones was commissioned to sound out publishers and newspaper executives for advice on how he might be trained as an editor. His uncle, the fifth John Jacob Astor, owned ...”

“... black, bitten-down fingers and a smear of grease across his forehead. He was known as Motorbike Bill because he repeatedly built and rebuilt his Triumph. ‘Triumph of the Bill,’ father liked to murmur as they passed. When, for weeks, numerous lumps of metal stood on rags around the skeleton of the bike, and, in the ...”

“... of the Trump Links golf course, the name spelled out in giant letters of grey bricks set into the brown grass. It was a Tuesday morning, and we were on the way to see Donald Trump address an arena full of New Hampshire residents at Great Bay Community College on the outskirts of Portsmouth. On the radio the former Colorado senator and disgraced 1984 ...”

“... of the landscape and positioned the Conservatives to exploit it in the coming fight with Gordon Brown, New Labour’s heir in waiting. ‘Imagine a Tory leader promising that when his government came in there would be no special favours for those who contribute to Conservative Party funds; for employers, businessmen and the City; for big landowners, rich ...”

“... classroom? Have you ever noticed how most museum-goers don’t stop in front of Picasso’s dense, brown-hued Cubist masterpieces of 1911-12? Is Ellington’s accessibility compromised by puzzlement at the band’s idiosyncratic jungle sounds?The Jungle Band’s most extraordinary sounds were produced by the trumpeters Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams (who ...”

“... over the years: fear of Scargill, fear of Galtieri, fear of inflation, fear of black and brown people. And in 1987, whatever the raggedness in the presentation of her own policies, she played it again to perfection. In a book clearly designed to serve the interests of the Lord Young-Tim Bell faction in the intrigues around the Peacock Throne, the ...”

“... in the next four years and to deploy 6000 National Guard along the length of the frontier. The bill is sponsored by John McCain (Arizona), who, like George W. Bush, was once an immigration liberal but sees where the votes have come to lie in recent years. Two highly visible protagonists in the immigration drama, Salvador Reza and the Republican state ...”

“... the Vegan refused. Later she said: ‘Carmen, I hope your sister wasn’t offended but I only eat brown bread.’ Just before lunch the person who had the sex change was at the nurse’s desk in a flimsy blue nightdress, asking if she could wash her hair. But there’s still no hot water. The nurse was calling her Caroline. She looked very excited about her ...”

“... minds’. Banville has rejected Joyce and Beckett as influences. O’Nolan surprisingly fills the bill. O’Nolan and Banville, although they are both disdainful of it, compel themselves to imagine the ordinary. Brian O’Nolan stayed put in Dublin not least because of this moral conservatism. The best of O’Nolan’s work transforms that personal attachment ...”