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“... for them camels!’ warns the fastidious Waller. At the conclusion of ‘Spring Cleaning (Getting Ready for Love)’ (1936), he convincingly imitates a raucous old vacuum cleaner being revved up. The machine faces a daunting challenge if it hopes to suck in the bits and pieces of all the songs that Waller has decimated, and even a few camel droppings. Why ...”

“... O’Neill, Chekhov, Ibsen. It was only when he moved with his white soon to be second wife, Judy Oliver, to her home town of St Paul in 1978 that his interest in playwrighting began in earnest. He wrote children’s plays on science-related subjects for the Science Museum of Minnesota; the Penumbra Theatre mounted a disastrous satirical musical, Black ...”

“... will meet his fans’ highest expectations. In American letters I can compare Thomas only with Oliver Wendell Holmes (the father of the one whom Americans think of first). But although both were medical professors and, in their time, deans, their affinity does not really go much deeper than the relaxed and genial style they share: only a young left-wing ...”

“... with convincing ease: When I hear the English tongue Like a whistle, but even shriller – I see Oliver Twist among A heaping of office ledgers. Go ask Charles Dickens this, How it was in London then: The old City with Dombey’s office, The yellow waters of the Thames. There is a salubrious élan about much of the book, and the fact that this is indeed a ...”

“... beetle Gregor by his family, of Woyzeck by the captain, of Jews by Nazis, Russians by Communists, Oliver Twist by Bumble, of Smike by Squeers (Nicholas Nickleby was one of Canetti’s early and passionate enthusiasms)? For such an artist, the inner world, the world of his invention, cannot and should not be any different from the world of human and historical ...”

“... rally, their blue and white banners aloft under lowering skies, their manner aggressive-dejected, ready to make a point: these were thoroughbred Serbs, impoverished and passionate, dressed in standard-issue combats and busy T-shirts. It was a promising moment for the Radical leader Tomislav Nikolic, deputising for the party’s president, Vojislav Seselj, who ...”

“... in his armchair, which was the one that had tried to levitate. He seemed, by his watchful silence, ready to put an end to any nonsense, from furniture or guests or any other quarter. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, Ijaz flaked his baklava over his lap, he juggled with his fork and jiggled his coffee cup. After our dinner party, he said, almost the next ...”

“... or wanting to be alone together,’ Arthur noted in his diary. She always seemed so secure, so ready to talk, so willing to do anything for anyone, that it is very pathetic to think what was going on behind. In fact, the whole record seems a tragic one … Her diary is very painful to me because it shows how little in common they had and how cruel he ...”

“... of his eye feasting on things, his sensibility sharpened and refined by travel and solitude; he is ready to make sweeping, confident, discriminating judgments for the benefit of the folks at home. Some of these letters, with their tone of pure youthful delight, have a greater urgency and fluency than the essays in Italian Hours. At the end of 1869, for ...”

“... child-sorcerer of market democracy, sweet-toothed and capricious, gaining weight by the meal and ready to throw it about: government can’t quite face off against us. Well, not yet – but there’s a strong hint that in Defra’s thinking ‘choice’ is no longer the only yardstick of the democratic mile. It prefers ‘informed choice’, but who will ...”

“... Boys and Girls’. With its royal-blue cloth and heraldic shield, its text broken down into Jamie Oliver-sized portions suitable for juvenile digestion, this book is remembered for its illustrations by A.S. Forrest, a succession of poignant tableaux like a village hall pageant. The Thames underwrites a narrative of royal escapes, murdered princelings, futile ...”

“... gets in the way. And it’s somehow all too easy. Both the 17-year-old Elio and his older lover, Oliver, are flawless, but with no anguish to their affection. Nor is there any lack of understanding from the boy’s parents, his father particularly, with this being singled out as evidence of the film’s maturity. It’s quite chaste, very beautiful and it ...”

“... We talked about the deal and then Jamie went into detail about the security issues. ‘Are you ready to have your phone tapped by the CIA?’ he asked. He said Julian insisted the book would have to be written on a laptop that had no internet access. When I arrived at Ellingham Hall Assange was fast asleep. He’d been living there, at the house of Vaughan ...”

“... and the light it throws on the street life and topography of Victorian London. But now they are ready to start the scene and I look again into the dead eyes of my impassive neighbour, who did three days last week on The Bill, and tell him that I will mention his name to the Italian Ambassador, with whom I will be dining tomorrow night at Diana Cooper’s.22 ...”

“... speaking parts. The second type of permitted mimesis is for ‘voluntary’ activities. In Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings a doctor persuades the hospital authorities to let him try a new treatment on patients sunk in a permanent catatonic trance. They are unable to react to people or the world around. This treatment brings the patients to life again, but ...”