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“... resonance?) of double lives, whispers, betrayal, running back from the Gang of Four (Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt) to the Apostles; a tradition that is impossible to honour now that there are no secrets left, no one to listen. The spy and his spook-master pay homage to familiar tutorial arrangements: civilised interrogations on park benches, brisk ...”

“... the author, ‘is not even an 18th-century Scottish word.’ My respect for the past goes up. Charles Camic believes, I think, that the great men of the Enlightenment could pioneer new areas of thought only if they had been removed from their fathers’ influence at an early age, and later subjected to university in large, impersonal classes. So Adam ...”

“... team’s efforts from their temporary HQ in Gayfere Street are larded with sentences like ‘Mr Maclean, a shrewd, witty, tough-minded Highlander who has also been a whip, was an admirable member of the bunker ...’ There are endless lists of names – all wonderful, wonderful people, of course – plus remarks like ‘the discussions never remained solemn ...”

“... broad-bottomed merchant vessel reconfigured by the navy as an armed freighter. It was named after Charles Wager, the first lord of the Admiralty and mastermind of the secret mission. In May 1741, having already lost dozens of its crew to disease, the Wager ran aground in the fearsome seas off the coast of Chile. Of the ship’s original complement of around ...”

“... poems and spoke to unimpressed Czechs about ‘The Music of Poetry’), the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, European writers including Louis Aragon and Paul Éluard, and Franz Kafka’s former partner Dora Dymant.When the war ended, Edwin was appointed director of the British Institute in Prague. He was much admired there, but Willa (whose Czech was much ...”

“... filmmaking came in the shape of The Guns of Navarone (1961), adapted from a novel by Alistair MacLean and directed by J. Lee Thompson. By the beginning of the 1960s, the war’s most photogenic episodes had all been used up: The Colditz Story, The Dam Busters, Sink the Bismarck! It was time to let the old action adventure format loose on some vaguely ...”

“... that very day (‘Just the two of us, I promise’), and I would go along to her mews house behind Charles Street to find the tête-à-tête had turned into a party for 16, with the guests the likes of the American ambassador, Roy Jenkins, Kofi Annan and such. She never seemed 103 or anything like it and got up for an occasion looked magnificent. She was a ...”

“... have been writing. Some examples: ‘She had a face like an upturned canoe,’ said by the actor Charles Gray at breakfast in Dundee (though of whom I can’t remember). A. I’ve been salmon fishing. B. It’s not the season. A. No. I thought I’d take the blighters by surprise. ‘Here we are. Fat Pig One and Fat Pig Two.’ Said by my mother when ...”