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“... is to do with its still shimmering quality. The film was an alchemical success: Frank Sinatra, John Frankenheimer, Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey would never better their performances here. ‘Something in the story, something in the times,’ Marcus writes, ‘that had to have been sensed, felt, but never thought out, never shaped into a theory or a ...”

“... Roy Shaw will not have expected an easy passage as Secretary-General of the Arts Council, but the weather worsened steadily during his tenure, and the discomfort exceeded all rational apprehensions. His book explains why this was so.* The directorate of the Council exists primarily to make judgments of value; it is required, having taken the best advice available, to decide which enterprises deserve public support, and to what extent ...”

“... but as home secretary he came into his own.One of Sidmouth’s spies, a man called John Castle, was on the action committee responsible for organising the huge and supposedly peaceful meeting of reformers on Spa Fields that was to be addressed by the mellifluous Orator Hunt. Castle tirelessly whipped up the labourers who had just been laid off ...”

“... The chief pleasure of the new version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is the sight of John Travolta as the model bad guy. He is genial and livid by turns, entirely persuasive in both moods, the very image of crazed behaviour, and far more engaging and unhinged than he was in Pulp Fiction. That film brought certain of his earlier roles to mind, but this one makes us want to rethink Grease entirely, and maybe the whole genre of the musical ...”

“... to do at an Anglican service: MacDonald was much at sea and missed some of his cues. Then came John Galsworthy and Bernard Shaw, presumably the literary kings of the time. Galsworthy behaved impeccably, doing everything absolutely right. Shaw got enjoyment by looking around most of the ...”

“... his death in 1905, Terry extended her range, not least into the work of her correspondent Bernard Shaw. She died, a national treasure, in 1928. The succeeding generation followed their parents into the business, though inevitably they were overshadowed. Laurence and Harry Irving were both actors (the former was a playwright as well). Terry’s daughter, Edith ...”

“... many have been. Max Beerbohm was, when at a dinner party he asked Davies, ‘How long is it since Shaw discovered you?’; on being told it was 13 or 14 years, he replied, ‘Oh dear dear – and has it been going on all this time?’ and added that Shaw had obviously ‘helped a lame dog over the stile’. The insult was ...”

“... bourgeoisie at their most genteel, sentimental and dressy. Nothing more exasperated George Bernard Shaw than Sullivan’s habit of conducting in gloves, and nothing more exasperated Sullivan than Gilbert’s inverted universe of puppets and paradox. Regiments led from behind, sons older than their mothers, dysfunctional utopias, flying peers and elliptical ...”

“... the ten thousand or so letters. He lived for 63 years, yet wrote sixty-odd plays, equalling Shaw, who lived thirty years longer. And not only plays: novels, memoirs, poetry, essays. He was also a superb painter. He led a complicated life with manifold pursuits to which Sue Prideaux’s Strindberg: A Life does condign justice. She is ...”

“... life. ‘She was always shooting towards tragedy,’ said the virtuoso clarinettist Artie Shaw, whose band she briefly sang for. ‘It was just a question of how and when.’ Billie Holiday with Louis Armstrong and Barney Bigard in 1947. Singing stops stuttering. In Holiday’s case, it stopped loneliness by making art out of the indigestible ...”

“... In​ 1836, Benjamin Shaw looked back on a life of toil in the textile factories of the North-East. He was a skilled worker, but had lived in poverty for years, buried his wife and four of his children, had a leg amputated (diseased as a result of unhealthy working conditions), and been left to care for his illegitimate orphaned granddaughter ...”

“... this time in a more objectively historical context. Hamilton offers 22 case studies, from John Donne – the first properly biographed English author – to Philip Larkin of last month’s Observer fame. Hamilton could not, if he tried, write an unreadable book. Keepers of the Flame is that rarest of modern things, lit crit with laughs. Hamilton has ...”

“... to hallucinate three or four crabs who followed him around for a year. Each morning, he later told John Gerassi, he would greet them: ‘My little ones, how did you sleep?’ He got used to the crabs, but other sea creatures – molluscs in particular – remained objects of horror. Sliminess had something to do with it. Being and Nothingness (1943) concludes ...”

“... knew the value of cash, but more out of a refusal to be sold at market. Husband No. 2 was Artie Shaw, the band-leader. Rooney looked up to her; Hughes stalked her; Artie Shaw tried to educate her. Shaw was an insufferable intellectual. He oppressed her with psychoanalysis and ...”

“... commend good practice but are frequently critical. The prisons and probation ombudsman, Stephen Shaw, reported on Oakington in July 2005 after a BBC documentary, Detention Undercover: The Real Story, exposed instances of racism and abuse by detention custody officers (DCOs) employed by GSL. Shaw, who believes that the ...”