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“... conducts a farcical tour of eminent writers, which reaches its climax in a mountain temple, where Stephen Spender and Angus Wilson look on as an enema is administered on the tatami to a haemorrhoidal Alberto Moravia. The indifference and obliviousness of these literary celebrities find their epitome in Truman Capote. ‘I have seen Japan,’ he announces in ...”

“... the authentic flavour of Robert Roberts’s The Classic Slum with the vigour and directness of Stephen Humphries’s Hooligans or Rebels? – yet at the same time shows greater objectivity and receptiveness to informants. It is a study well worth replicating elsewhere. There are few surprises – but no matter, for the book hits the reader between the eyes ...”

“... be trumped by Ronald Reagan in his speech to the Republican Convention. Parodying the rebuke which Lloyd Bentsen had delivered to Dan Quayle four years previously, Reagan mocked his own antiquity – ‘I knew Thomas Jefferson’ – the better to prick Clinton’s presumption. For once, the Great Communicator’s message was lost, as the Convention proceeded ...”

“... at the Guggenheim. Designed by the Post-Modern artist Robert Wilson, who has draped the Frank Lloyd Wright spiral ramps with white gauze, bathed the museum in patchouli and musk, and created a Japanese soundtrack to accompany the show, the exhibition is a perfect example of the blend of fashion, art, commerce and academic analysis that marks the current ...”

“... was an allegory of winter and spring, life and death. Hopper sent a copy of Flexner’s letter to Lloyd Goodrich, his early champion and the director of the Whitney, with a note stating: ‘Since I took the trouble of having a photostat made of it, it may indicate that I am not so modest as I am said to be.’ Writing to Flexner himself, Hopper dismissed the ...”

“... the news, will forget how, with the escalating tension of a penalty shoot-out, Lord Slynn and Lord Lloyd rose in turn to vote for the dismissal of the appeal; and then how Lord Nicholls, Lord Steyn and Lord Hoffmann rose one by one to cast their votes for allowing it. The extradition proceedings were to go ahead: there was to be no hiding place in the ...”

“... one must read Eugene Black; the arrival of East European Jewry has been illuminatingly detailed by Lloyd Gartner; the career of Lord Jakobovits, the present Chief Rabbi’s predecessor, has been better analysed by Chaim Bermant, as has the role of the Jewish grandees, or ‘cousinhood’; Colin Holmes’s study of English anti-semitism is essential reading on ...”

“... the first place. It is the facetiousness that annoys. Is John Pilger really so dreadful? Can the Stephen Waldorf affair be taken lightly? Does Johnson have to talk about Greenham women as if he were an agent of Lord Gnome? The British Library will catalogue him under ‘Anecdotes, facetiae, satire etc’ – which is fine. But he should allow himself the ...”

“... tanned and more tired’. The latest contribution from the legion of dishonourers is Stephen Birmingham’s life of the Duchess. Macmillan assure us that the writer is ‘the well-known American popular historian’ (author of The Towers of Love, Heart Troubles and other classics), and that we are offered ‘a truly thoroughgoing ...”

“... disc jockeys, sprinters and politicians. He envied Mick Jagger and Herbert Von Karajan and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stockhausen and the panel of Any Questions. He envied Bruce Forsyth, Henry Cooper, Chairman Hua, and even Virginia Wade for winning Wimbledon. He didn’t have a clue who Barry Sheene was, but he envied him. Now, Sefton would have to add to the ...”

“... the British people and hardworking taxpayers. The former Conservative prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, in 2015: The opposition will say, now, let’s spend and spend and spend. But, next year, we will use the fiscal room to do what we promised: cut taxes for hardworking Canadian families. The US Republican Marco Rubio, who wants to be ...”

“... Gaudi in Barcelona, Wagner and Hoffman in Vienna, Guimard and Horta in France and Belgium, Frank Lloyd Wright in the US – of which he finds Clough, and the AA generally, unaware. I am not at all sure, either about the unawareness or about this ferment being the only one available. After all, Clough was plumb in the middle of the excitements of the Cottage ...”

“... he has become a central subject in New Historicist approaches to Elizabethan studies, notably in Stephen Greenblatt’s Sir Walter Ralegh: The Renaissance Man and His Roles, the most stimulating modern study of Ralegh. This collection of letters was assembled by the late Agnes Latham, who edited Ralegh’s poems in 1951. It was originally intended as a ...”

“... for the lighter but more efficient cane: much relish here in the details. ‘Dick’ moans to Stephen Spender: ‘Even if I become prime minister, I’ll never again be as great as I was at Winchester.’ ‘Dick’ is immortalised by John Betjeman: Broad of Church and Broad of Mind, Broad Before and Broad Behind. ‘Dick’ competes with Auden for the ...”

“... in Oscar Wilde’s footsteps, Loy decided to become a work of art. Her first marriage, to Stephen Haweis, an English painter and photographer, was unhappy. The strain of Haweis’s numerous affairs and the death of their daughter, of meningitis, two days after her first birthday, led to their separation. However, when Loy became pregnant as a result ...”