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“... Mr and Mrs Arbuthnot. But when, in 1930, she heard Valentine Ackland wailing through a bedroom wall that she felt unloved, Warner bounded through the door and never again went to bed with a man. Valentine Ackland was 24, with an Eton crop and a ruffled past. At 16 she was disowned by her father, who advised her that infatuation with an older girl would ...”

“... use of electricity I walk the corridors         Trailing my fingertips the length of the wall.         I think of adjectives to sum this building up:     Warrenous, respectable, and windowless. When you Talk to me I watch the movement of your lungs, the ripple         Of the fibres of your mohair pullover.         The ...”

“... Love Mum & Dad) Then fold the wrapping for possible re-use. A breeze laps the posters crusting the wall; Like lily pads, they compete to face the light. I bump into Philip inside the Lodge. He asks to see the gift – another four-sleeved Pullover! Raising it shoulder-high, he Teases me about the additional arms Till I make my excuses and leave him At the ...”

“... the cultural horsepower of Europe, as compared to America, which has been fashionable ever since Stephen Spender’s Love-Hate Relations. Philip Toynbee, in the Observer, came right out with it: ‘by now it is hard to see any reason why an American writer or artist should wish to settle either in Paris or London.’ Then, of course, it was another ...”

“... ingredients in each period of her life’, is a blown-up photograph of the exposed side wall of the house. Some of the panels that Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant had painted for the third-floor drawing room are, as Virginia told them, ‘still pendant’. ‘I cd just see a piece of my studio ...”

“... on her face as if it had been worked there by a knife in marble. It is winter, and a protective wall behind Pamela hosts espaliered trees, apricot and peach. No shadows are visible, anywhere: the dark runnels of shade cast by the fake dovecote at the side of the green are out of frame; the rackets court, disguised as cottages for the rural population Pamela ...”

“... He was not noted for his good neighbourliness. When the plot above bored a hole in the wall to allow flashflood water to continue its natural course towards the Limpopo, he fired a shotgun through before blocking it off again. This warlike Portuguese also stripped the residence of many of its welcoming Edwardian features, erecting a mighty ...”

“... quite close to my target.’ We were gazing across Robinson’s lawn at the ramparts of his garden wall. His closed circuit TV was showing a dull black-and-white road movie about the cars passing his gates. I thought it was curious that Robinson had spoken about a chance of getting his gun out rather than a need to. I made a point of taking the words down in ...”

“... but worry that the IHRA definition requires them to do so. When a replica of Israel’s separation wall was erected in the churchyard of St James, Piccadilly in 2013, the Spectator denounced it as an ‘anti-Israeli hate-festival’ – a description now capable of coming within the IHRA’s ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism. In such ways the official ...”

“... he says and leads me away from his desk into an adjoining conference room. Dominating the far wall of this cheaply furnished office is a photograph some six feet wide and two feet high. ‘This was taken from a roof terrace across the street,’ he tells me. I see a sky of purplish black, a distant set of yellow lights, and in the foreground the boxy ...”

“... in Northern France. It’s fair to say that he is proud of his roots. A naive cartoon on his wall shows Dave’s head mounted on a bulldog’s body. And he blithely conducts his business in sterling, indifferent to the native coin. He fears closer integration with our European partners, along the lines of the harmonisation of alcohol duty – something ...”

“... an MFA instructor proud, even as it seemed to parody MFA style: ‘I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage.’ The miscarriage is the product of a marriage that’s not built to last. This isn’t to say that Tiffany, the narrator, and Stephen, the husband, loathe each ...”

“... It is worth stating a few facts about Stephen Tennant, the subject of this excellent biography by Philip Hoare, in case some readers may not have heard of him. He was born in 1906, the son of a rich industrialist, Edward Tennant, who became Lord Glenconner in 1911, and of Pamela Wyndham, one of the Wyndham sisters immortalised by Sargent in his painting The Three Graces ...”

“... ambulances, the black marias – reminding you of a natural affinity between the fly on the wall and carrion. In one of the news updates which has to hold its own in the ratings alongside this kind of thing, the matched anchors – the usual his ‘n’ hers combo, suggesting an April-October wedding – revealed that a boy of 11 had been gated by his ...”

“... shows a phalanx of unpainted male prostitutes, leaning on some railings. Watching for a cab, Stephen Fry’s Wilde makes eye contact with one of them. ‘Looking for someone?’ asks the lad (identified as ‘Rent-boy’ in the closing credits), and Fry stares helplessly across the street. Gilbert does all he can to italicise the moment, but since Fry ...”