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“... the only full-length novel devoted to olfaction originates, like A Rebours, in an alien culture. Patrick Süskind’s Perfume was translated from the original German and published in Britain and America in 1986. The novel (originally put out in hardback by Hamish Hamilton) neatly partners Corbin’s The Foul and the Fragrant. Set in pre-Revolution France, it ...”

“... and quite brilliant talent. And a talent effortlessly exercised, which is more than can be said of Patrick McGrath’s. His eponymous Spider, whose name is really Dennis, lives in Mrs Wilkinson’s boardinghouse, eats the awful food she prepares for the inmates, and keeps a journal in which he recalls his youth in this same area of London’s East End. In the ...”

“... customers with a bona fide professional interest. It seems odd that the editors, Daniel Gunn and Patrick Guyomard, should get their knickers in such a twist about Sir Archibald when forty years later Mervyn Griffith-Jones, the Senior Treasury Counsel against Lady Chatterley, was still getting his in a twist about the possible evil effects of the book on his ...”

“... were getting under way in October 1981, of his own supposed 38 per cent wage increase. Patrick Jenkin, the Industry Secretary, was wheeled on to tell the Commons that Edwardes drew a ‘remuneration package’ and that, over the five years of his contract, the ‘cost to the company’ of the ‘package’ was 5 per cent per year. Compound ...”

“... of the background to the current state of the IRA is knowledgeably sketched by Eamonn Mallie and Patrick Bishop. Anyone looking for startling new disclosures will be disappointed, but theirs is a solid, lucidly written account. Their judgments are shrewd and unsentimental and their analysis of the IRA of the Sixties acute. But their coverage of a number of ...”

“... Does anyone remember Little Me – a fictional autobiography published by Patrick Dennis 30 years ago in mockery of the self-adulatory memoirs which gushed, as they still gush, from actor-dramatists and other multi-talented luvvies? Little Me would not only conduct the symphony he had composed for the inaugural concert in the splendid new concert hall, he was also the architect who had designed the splendid new concert hall ...”

“... was found in the US mailbag at 46 Lower Belgrave Street in London there has been no new evidence. Patrick Marnham’s only novelty is the evidence from Taki, the Spectator gossip-columnist, to the effect that he knew Lucky Lucan had a powerboat and had made dummy runs with an eight-stone sack to the coast. That fits with Lucan’s remarks to Greville Howard ...”

“... With Patrick Keiller’s work a suitable place to begin would seem to be the end – specifically The End (1986), the first film by him to incorporate the subject matter and use the techniques that came to typify his mature style. Seventeen minutes long, and photographed in the autumn of 1983 by Keiller and his sometime collaborator (and full-time partner), Julie Norris, The End consists of what might be termed mises-en-scène trouvées; if by this we are to understand the fortuitous discovery by the camera’s lens of landscapes, cityscapes and their largely spectral human inhabitants ...”

“... then died raggedly away, replaced by a tumult of weeping. W.C. Fields would be proud of her. Patrick O’Brian’s 13th story about Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin – appropriately called The Thirteen-Gun Salute – is as entertaining as its predecessors. O’Brian is a master of the narrative of action, but he has sustained interest through this long ...”

“... talk of this fabulous hybrid called the ‘Euronovel’, of which the next memorable example was Patrick Süskind’s Perfume. The Last World, a short and cheerless fictionalisation of Ovid’s years in exile by the Austrian writer Christoph Ransmayr, was a bestseller throughout most of Europe while doing poorly in this country, but any thoughts that this ...”

“... work otherwise. No pain, no gain. Feel the burn. Actually, I’d rather not, and the blessed Patrick Wall, neuroscientist and pain doctor, wishes it to be known that pain is almost entirely useless and good for nothing but getting rid of. He cites cancer pain, with the impatience of one who is suffering it himself, as the apogee of pointlessness. Cancer ...”

“... a developing process which aims at the establishment of a full cultural identity. Unfortunately, Patrick Buckland has not meditated on these questions and his title, A History of Northern Ireland, is offered without irony. Although Buckland is more of a memorialist than a serious historian, he has performed a valuable service in such works as The Factory of ...”

“... courageous, though not always as successful. I find it hard to enjoy the florid extravagances of Patrick White’s Voss, while respecting the attempt to make word match fact. Xavier Herbert tried to meet size with size, insisting that his Poor Fellow My Country, close on a million words, be published in a single hardback volume which one day may kill a frail ...”

“... says. The view from Belgium is that the only place that isn’t Brexit-proof is Britain itself. Patrick McGuinness BulgariaSince the two most pressing issues for Bulgarians – EU funding and citizens’ rights – were by and large ironed out by the time of the European Commission meeting last March, Brexit news has mostly been light relief in the ...”

“... Despite a new paralysis – my back –Am stirred, perhaps, to mine the new resource,Put down my worn suitcases and unpack.[Publications]Reader, should I turn another page?Fly off to somewhere, maybe even worse?Or limp serenely into middle ageAnd try to flog this flimsy book of verse? [c/o Fig Tree PocketQldAustraliaphotopies ofrelevantdocumentati ...”