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“... down for the winter. Raindrops prickled on the dark water just above where it filled with cold light as it curved out to leap through the sluice. It was the kind of thing Leonardo da Vinci liked to draw. Leonardo hadn’t been here, of course, but nearly everybody else had. Not only Rupert Brooke had been down at the Mill. Rutherford had sat here on the ...”

“... that Alistair McAlpine was writing his memoirs some optimists hoped he might match the diaries of Alan Clark, whose sustained and entertaining indiscretions caused such exquisite pleasure. No such luck. At least three-quarters of McAlpine’s book is a dreary account of a dreary life, whose most interesting passage is a tip about how to ...”

“... explains why egg whites can be beaten stiff more easily in a copper bowl, why poultry has dark and light meat, why sauces thicken, why pastry dough needs to rest, why bread rises, what browning does to foods, and countless other alchemical aspects of the kitchen. Possibly because his training straddles two disciplines, McGee is quite prepared to admit, on ...”

“... Well I’m sure I saw an ashtray as I was coming in.’ ‘That was holy water.’ In the light of these accessories, more often to be met with in Roman Catholic establishments, it was hardly surprising if some of the congregation were in doubt as to the church’s denomination, which was actually Anglican, though a bit on the high side. ‘I can ...”

“... In short, this is where you get off, reader; I’ll continue alone, on foot, in the failing light, following the trail as it steadily fades into road-repairs, birdsong, the weather, nirvana, the plot thinning down to a point so refined not even the angels could dance on it. Goodbye. You’ve been taken for a ride, in other words, and the mixture of ...”

“... He made music for every possible mood: something to play during the snoozy afternoon, a 12-inch to light up the dancefloor later on, and some sonic mist for your early morning chill-out. He even recorded two versions of some songs, one for the club and one for hi-fi or headphones: a vibrant oil painting followed by its preparatory sketch. Listening to the ...”

“... kept its reputation as a producer-led, oppositional space, not just for Edge of Darkness, but for Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff (1981), Dennis Potter’s sexually provocative and formally challenging Singing Detective (1986) and Richard Eyre’s film of Charles Wood’s anti-Falklands Tumbledown (1988). When a newly aggressive ITV, freed from ...”

“... a green Halston trouser suit.’) Next on the list are Bob Geldof and Paula Yates: According to Alan [Parker], Bob had a cock so big that he needed a wheelbarrow to carry it around in . . . But one didn’t need to have coffee with Alan Parker to know that Bob had a big dick. Everything about him announced the fact: the ...”

“... His travel books are ludicrous. ‘Van der Post’s Africa is no specific part of Africa,’ Alan Barnard, a leading specialist on the Bushmen, wrote. ‘The Bushmen he describes are not any specific one of the many diverse Bushman groups. They are the Bushmen of his imagination.’ In the mid-1960s, I lived for nearly two years in villages in the area ...”

“... industry. I take the quotations from Modiano with which I began (and a couple of later ones) from Alan Morris’s sensible book Patrick Modiano, published in 1996, and there have been several full-length works on him in French since, and plenty of articles. With Louis Malle, Modiano wrote the screenplay for Lacombe, Lucien (1974), and he wrote a book in ...”

“... In the darkness a faint spot of light appeared, pale yellow, the reflection of a star untouched by cloud. It blinked out for a few seconds, then reappeared, moving up and down, intermittently hidden behind branches heavy with leaves. Kneeling on the arm of a chair in the darkened study lined with books – smelling of books – he watched the light greedily, his nose pressed against the window, his breath misting the glass ...”

“... was on show, accompanied by Judy Egerton’s fine catalogue, there was also a video, narrated by Alan Bennett. As it finished on the day I was there, the woman in front of me said to her friend: ‘Well, I should hope they weren’t all like that.’ It was a very Bennett moment, as distinct from a Hogarthian one. ‘Missing the point’ was not in ...”

“... Sir William Robertson, is missing. Billy Smart, the circus proprietor, is in, though not Sir Alan Cobham, whose private air force introduced millions to flying, or Sir Donald Wolfit. Tom Webster, the sports cartoonist, gains his niche, but not ‘Beachcomber’. Enough of that; the game is too easy to play. The entries are skilfully ...”

“... of ice decorated with trailing seaweed; the experience was bathed in white and silver, in seaside light. It was an introduction to the mythology of France, of being British and having to learn what the French have to teach. I did not realise, until I read The English, the French and the Oyster, the extent to which the oyster had been lost to England long ...”

“... journalists Loretta Napoleoni (Insurgent Iraq) and Nick Davies (Flat Earth News) have thrown some light on the dense mesh of official misrepresentation surrounding Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was for some time the official face and emblem of the organisation for US officials. Starting out as a small-time opponent of the Jordanian regime, he was first referred ...”