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“... in the late 20th century. And some of his most characteristic tropes found distinguished copyists: Philip Johnson, for example, created an extraordinarily Soanean New York synagogue in the 1950s, and referred disarmingly to ‘the most cuddly, marvellous feeling’ of imitating Soane. Even more strikingly, Soane has been conscripted into the genealogy of ...”

“... My mother is such a bloody rambling fool,’ wrote Philip Larkin in 1965, ‘that half the time I doubt her sanity. Two things she said today, for instance, were that she had “thought of getting a job in Woolworth’s” and that she wanted to win the football pools so that she could “give cocktail parties” ...”

“... possessive woman I have ever known’. She did not get what she wanted. Macmillan’s solicitor Philip Frere pointed out that divorce would be fatal for his political career and recommended a ‘west wing-east wing’ solution, traditional among the estranged upper classes who had houses large enough for the purpose. Until she died in 1966 – suddenly, of ...”

“... for the distorting power of what is, by any measure, the richest single source, the letters to Philip Larkin. Some 530 of these survive, almost half of which were printed in Leader’s edition, predominantly from the 1940s and 1950s, the period of their greatest intimacy. They wrote to amuse each other but also to outdo each other, especially in ...”

“... and straggling villages: from half a mile off it was as remote as a little world inside a blown glass paperweight.’ The realities of life on land, and of the characters whom George has left there, seem pale and undeveloped by comparison with the vividness of life at sea. I am not sure that this is what Raban originally planned. He opens his book with a ...”

“... more like Edward Lear than King Lear. All successful artists view the world through a distorting glass which one can loosely define as style. It is a commonplace that artists make up their own worlds, and Waugh’s hilarious vision of things was so pervasive and distinctive that it could not be contained within the pages of his books. ‘I see nothing ...”

“... to watch over her. It is a familiar scheme in the movies, akin to General Sternwood enlisting Philip Marlowe to take care of his wild daughter in The Big Sleep. And we learned to trust the immaculate Marlowe and to love Bogart playing him, because no matter the fix he’s in, the private eye has a wisecrack and flawless assurance, as well as Lauren Bacall ...”

“... Crombie, pockets filled with crumpled paper and crumbs of chocolate, is the Thanet translation of Philip Marlowe’s trenchcoat. A trip through this territory, guided by the man himself, is both exhilarating and exhausting. He doesn’t talk, he lectures. Loudly. With a full head of steam. Like a man starved of proper conversation, denied an ...”

“... Sevigny), the only other young woman in the town; she helps Tom’s father, Thomas Edison Snr (Philip Baker Hall), with his pills; and she minds Vera’s children, who have names like Achilles, Pandora, Athena and Jason (Vera is played by Patricia Clarkson). Only Vera’s surly husband, Chuck (Stellan Skarsgård), seems resistant to Grace’s ...”

“... arrived two hundred years ago. (Ghosh described the Burmese oil wells in his 2000 novel The Glass Palace, which he quotes from here.) After losing territory to the British in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852-53, King Mindon took control of the Yenangyaung oil fields – ‘effectively nationalising the industry’ – and did a deal with Price’s ...”

“... the ‘aura of frosty English integrity hovering over his skeletal face’ as Deedes ‘lifted his glass of water and sipped it’. Thirteen years after his death she is still chewing over this ‘unpleasant’ encounter which she now attributes to Deedes’s own ‘twilight relationship’ with a much younger writer at the paper. In fact, she had simply dealt ...”

“... theories of The Da Vinci Code and the bestselling soi-disant historical studies that inspired them.Philip Almond surveys the torrent of claims and counterclaims in theological and popular literature across two millennia and sets out to show that Mary Magdalene has always represented ‘the sinner we should aspire not to be and the saint we should desire to ...”

“... light. The bright golds and scarlets of the religious pictures on the walls had faded, their glass glittered now in the sudden flashes of firelight, and as it deepened the dusk turned reddish from the Sacred Heart lamp that burned before the small wickerwork crib of Bethlehem on the mantelpiece. Only the cups and saucers laid ready on the table for their ...”

“... advanced are exactly the same as those of the equally sincere worshippers who wanted the stained-glass windows smashed in the 17th century or the rood loft removed in 1559. It didn’t suit their style of worship either. 4 July, Yorkshire. To Menwith Hill just outside Harrogate, where the veteran campaigner Lindis Percy has asked me to take part in an ...”

“... speech in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, as you can see the reef below you if you move over it in a glass-bottomed boat. Yet Plath seldom assumes the regularities of absolute metre. Auden’s and Fenton’s poetry employs regular metre and rhyme on many occasions, but does not seem archaic, whereas much of Other Passports (and not just the necessary journeyman ...”