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“... almost Stalinist as no one wants to be the first to stop clapping. Coming out I find myself behind Simon Williams, who has been mentioned by his son as one of Ben’s closest friends and am cheered by the possibility that if Ben could play Ambrose, so could Simon – which happily he does. But ‘lovely Ben’ the ...”

“... artists with sceptical fathers) – briefly entered Bouguereau’s classes at the Académie Julian, Van Gogh was already dead and Gauguin heading off to Tahiti. The last of the eight Impressionist exhibitions had taken place five years before. And what was Matisse painting? Brown still lifes. He said that the first time he really saw Impressionist ...”

“... the way Andrew Motion carries off his loden coat as he swirls between taxi and station platform. Julian Barnes’s novels are depilated at source, fat-free. Frisking them for a Moorcockian digression, a set of cellulite-heavy parentheses, would be like checking a tub of margarine for a stray pubic hair. Smoothness, the absence of bumps and flaws and evidence ...”

“... the author Carkin, Lartin, Lackin, Laikin and Lock. I sit in the front row with Blake Morrison, Julian Barnes and Andrew Motion. There are more poems and reminiscences but it’s all a bit thin and jerky. Now Patrick G. arrives, bringing the video of the film he made of Larkin in 1965 but there is further delay because while the machine works there is no ...”

“... successors as health secretary, was paid £60,000. The revolving door has become a blur. Simon Stevens, Blair’s special adviser on health, is now an executive vice president at UnitedHealth, one of America’s largest private health companies. Mark Britnell, a career NHS manager who rose to become one of the most powerful civil servants in the ...”