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“... political influence in Britain comes quite cheap. In late September, the former planning minister Bob Neill was found by a parliamentary committee to have breached its rules by failing to declare that he was being paid £1000 a month for ‘strategic consultancy services’ by a company that was handling planning permission for a luxury hotel development he ...”

“... that the stairs were made of stone, allowing him to creep up to his room incognito, ‘pursued by fine arguments and sherry’.Mr Macfie wore brown trousers and a cable knit sweater over a plaid shirt. He crossed his feet where he sat. He was wearing brown, elegant shoes. ‘I am the son and grandson of Edinburgh lawyers,’ he told me. His grandfather came ...”

“... door. It has become a byword with us, your first words, remember? ‘How far would ye go for fifty bob?’ We’ve had times. I miss your guitar: I hope I didn’t damage it irrevocably. Sadie Until we get the official biography, which is being written by Fintan O’Toole, we have little chance of making sense of Heaney’s occasional naughtiness. But the ...”

“... no victor’s Tribunal. The only victor that will prevail in this endeavour will be the truth.’ Fine words, but little practical help to the team working on the original statute for the ICTY. They knew very well that while justice was undoubtedly done by the representatives of the Allies in 1945, it was not always in compliance with the law or legal ...”

“... of running a railway, this wasn’t a bad time. Under the reign of its boss from 1983 to 1990, Bob Reid (who was succeeded, confusingly, by a completely different Bob Reid), parts of British Rail broke even; subsidies fell to levels far lower than in comparable European countries; new trains were brought in; lines were ...”

“... medicine clinic in Tijuana in November 1997. Seventeen people arrived at the house of the poet Bob Glück in San Francisco that December for a ceremony with a Nyingma Buddhist practitioner. Most of the group consisted of what Kevin Killian remembers as ‘New Agey-type people who had helped Kathy in her last years. Tattooists, bodybuilders, motorcycle ...”

“... the way for timid hedge-fund managers and City sharecroppers. The defining image of this era – Bob Hoskins (in the movie) with his sleek pleasure craft moored in St Katharine Docks, Margaret Thatcher schmoozing the Reichmann brothers in Canary Wharf – is the maquette of the proposed marina, the city of towers. A Lilliputian theme park of unimaginable ...”

“... suite. She padded across to it and surveyed the unbranded but obviously fancy modern toiletries. Fine. She did what she had to do to be ready for the day. She checked herself out in the mirror. Good: as often when she’d just woken up, she had perfect bedhead. It was known to be one of her best looks. The next question was: how to fill the day. What ...”

“... and increasingly painful reading. The summaries of late 20th-century German history are fine, although not particularly revealing. It is the memoir that is the problem, not because the life it recalls was a failure but – curiously – because it was an endless stream of successes that did not keep the demons at bay. On the last page, Stern reports ...”

“... in Florida, had been the frailest excuse for the yards of shtik: Groucho instructing Chico in the fine art of bidding up the price and Chico bidding against himself until Groucho, the auctioneer, is left holding the goods. Animal Crackers, another Kaufman-Ryskind collaboration, had even less plot and was all the better for that. Groucho as Captain ...”

“... stones that the others barely noticed. Or one of us would be pinned down in the canteen by Bob, the factory’s homespun philosopher, and the other would come to the rescue, jumping in on a debate about the existence of God, or the future of the Labour movement, with a smart remark or an absurdist digression. Helen was particularly good at ...”

“... the NKVD; the rest of the leadership had been arrested and worse; foreign sympathisers, including Bob Smillie, a friend of the Orwells and the Orrs, died in detention; and the POUM, which – as Helen Graham shows in The Spanish Republic at War (2002) – never amounted to a coherent force in the first place, was a sorry footnote in the larger story of the ...”

“... numerous other small ways helping Stone to deliver his novels before his editors lost patience.‘Bob once said, Kesey goes for life, but I’m going for art,’ Janice told Bell. ‘And I thought he made exactly the right decision, because all those great nights of back and forth, you know, they disappeared into the ether.’ She was speaking of the Perry ...”

“... pastiches of Bowie’s musical heroes of the 1960s – John Lennon, Syd Barrett, Anthony Newley, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground. Which would make Ziggy Stardust the beautiful butterfly that emerged from the chrysalis. Paul Trynka begins his biography with a description of Bowie’s performance of ‘Starman’ on Top of the Pops on 5 July 1972. It was ...”

“... I were there, I would just be like “Hey”.’ Not that he’s immune to celebrity. The actor Bob Balaban once asked him how to use the curl machine at the gym, and he talked about nothing else for the next two years. But the way to get me to do something is to tell me you’ll be upset if I don’t. He tucks his own treasured fanny pack into my ...”