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“... is cruelty in it.’ At Oxford he made friends with two other able autobiographers, David Thomson, the future BBC producer, and Denis Hills, the African explorer, destined to be rescued by James Callaghan from the clutches of Idi Amin. Michael Wharton spent much of his term-time practising West Riding Knife Throwing with his mates, or ...”

“... white grin, held for much longer than it takes to say ‘cheese’, I can see a glimpse of what David Thomson calls Kelly’s ‘harsh, calculating cheerfulness’. It is a picture of an all-American confidence, one that was not just Kelly’s but belonged to his audience and to his time. (Johnny Green recalls his Freed Unit colleagues as ‘the ...”

“... intervention. ‘The miracle happened in that film emulsion. Who knows why?’ Writing in 1975, David Thomson compared Garbo to Christ – there were times in their lives when all they wanted was to be left alone – before concluding with a reiteration of the same ‘mysterious truth’: ‘She was photographed. She was all in the silver.’ Whether ...”

“... considered sinful in their time: they are Rahab the harlot, Bathsheba who was tempting to King David, Tamar who coaxed her father-in-law – and even Ruth, who crept under the bedclothes of Boaz, her kinsman. Does not this suggest that Matthew wanted to show that Mary was descended from ‘sinners’? This is far-fetched. We are not convinced that Matthew ...”

“... with aberration and divergence. In his brave and inventive reconstruction, Wild Diversions (1972), David Thomson found a good image for it: ‘He did not live in the conventional order from day to day, but grew strong or weak like the wind.’ Obviously this has something to do with the vacillations of his physical health – Arthur Cash brings this out ...”

“... tough keeping track of all the debutantes promenading into print and creating a stir: Donna Tartt, David Leavitt, Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Nancy Lemann, Susan Minot, Mary Robison, Anderson Ferrell – a cast of dozens. Many of those rookies trained at the literary dojo of the author, editor, creative writing teacher and guru-mentor-mindgamer ...”

“... an evening glove. So, too, did mid-Victorian Glasgow define the professional life of Alexander Thomson. Thomson (1817-75) grew up near to what was fast becoming Britain’s ‘Second City’. After 1800, Glasgow grew fat on the West Indian textile trade, diversifying during the 1830s into heavy industry. The disruptions ...”

“... a habit of dropping his trousers and removing his clothes when provoked and, famously, peeing on David O. Selznick’s carpet (in the middle of a meeting about a film version of A Doll’s House). He was articulate and rude to journalists, which also generated copy. ‘Booze, broads, all true,’ he told hacks. ‘Make up some more if you want to.’ Mitchum ...”

“... he once said. ‘But it exists. It is just about the only photograph I have seen of Schindler.’ David Bailey, or Antonioni’s Blow-Up, was one model to follow, but Eagar went to Vietnam. When he returned he got a job at Which? magazine, where he says he ‘tested’ red wine. But photography was always the aim. In 1969 he photographed the images on his ...”

“... role as though it wasn’t happening to me. I think that’s how I got the audience on my side.’ David Thomson admired Grant’s ‘rare willingness ... to take part in a fantasy without being deceived by it’. So much was he a self-parody in essence, or in style at least, that his play-acting nature became a running joke in his movies. ‘You’re ...”

“... travelling on the muddy highways and muddier byways of England and Scotland, a young poet, James Thomson (b. 1700), was roaming the cold hills of Scotland. Defoe, who toured through the area where James Thomson was born, thought little of it: agriculture in Roxburghshire was in a pitiful state, the people suffering a ...”

“... the influence of his other great mentor and guide when a young man, the Australian priest Peter Thomson, who became Blair’s closest friend and confidant while he was an undergraduate at Oxford. When Thomson died earlier this year, Blair said at his funeral: ‘There are few people of whom you can say: he changed my ...”

“... Life of an Ordinary Man, the posthumous memoir pieced together by the publisher and journalist David Rosenthal. His source material was a series of interviews Newman recorded with the screenwriter Stewart Stern between 1986 and 1991, along with ‘oral histories’ of Newman by his contemporaries. In her foreword, Newman’s daughter Melissa says he wanted ...”

“... howlers, there is no moment in the Black Diaries which settles the argument either way. Basil Thomson, who was the chief of the Special Branch created at Scotland Yard at the beginning of the First World War for the detection of enemy spies, interrogated Casement for three days after his capture. Thomson left five ...”

“... and behind it lay the struggle of a very rich man to do good. In his role as owner-editor, David Astor had more freedom than any other journalist in London, but power made him bashful and uneasy. When, towards the end of Astor’s editing career, the South African journalist Donald Woods proposed a series of interviews with him, Astor suggested that ...”