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“... figures who recreated modern writing were gay, or Irish, or Jewish: Melville, Whitman, Hopkins, James, Yeats, Kafka, Woolf, Joyce, Stein, Beckett, Mann, Proust, Gide, Firbank, Lorca, Cocteau, Auden, Forster, Cavafy. But he would have been slightly unsettled, I think, by the thought of the gay element in this list, and by the idea that in place of ...”

“... who hails first shall ask, What ship’s that? then he that is hailed shall answer King George then he who hailed first shall answer Queen Charlotte, and the other shall answer God Preserve.’ If the crews really got out of touch they were to leave messages in bottles at pre-assigned beaches or map readings. It helps also, in reading not Cook ...”

“... little bells’) – was composed at Meung. In 1461, having obtained a royal pardon when the new king rode through Orléans, Villon returned to Paris. The ‘Testament’ was written here, ‘en l’ an de mon trentiesme age’. It’s richer and longer than the ‘Legacy’, full of lower blows and better comedy, but its worldliness is offset by the ...”

“... as he is keen to remind us. They are like the celebrated Alfred Jewel, which belonged to the King, and is inscribed: ‘Alfred caused me to be made.’ Furthermore, Pushkin emphasises that these characters are not only his characters but the culture’s: they are the children of Richardson and Rousseau, the offspring of Bréguet’s ...”

“... the appearance hereabouts of some parting advice one mother gave to her son, the young Scottish MP James Fergusson, as he set out for Westminster: ‘Never expose yourself, James, to be tried for a rape, for your broad shoulders will cause a jury to think it probable you made the attempt, and your face will make it manifest ...”

“... In The Green Knight we have to contend with Lucas and Clement Graffe, Harvey Blacket, Bellamy James and his dog Anax, the Anderson women – Louise and her daughters Alethea (Aleph), Sophia (Sefton) and Moira (Moy) – Emil and Clive and the Adwardens. A reader alert to social differences will find such names far from neutral. An odour of class hangs ...”

“... have been shared by the British Government of the day nor, probably, by the US Defence Secretary, James Forrestal, nor by many high officials in the State Department who deplored the activities of President Truman and the Zionist lobby. If America’s role was marginal, it was also appreciable. Shlaim’s treatment of 1948 is, indeed, slightly ...”

“... Of the six plays which exist in forms such that authorial revision may be suspected, one – King Lear – is included in this edition in both variant forms. Hamlet might have been treated likewise but for considerations of space. The editors are here again acting on examined convictions, though admitting they may be wrong. And it is true that the plays ...”

“... of Wales asked his father, George V, if he could have the use of Fort Belvedere at Windsor the king was surprised: ‘What could you possibly want that queer old place for? Those damn week-ends I suppose.’ He caved in and perhaps regretted it, for the weekends with their associated guests and amusements made possible the affair with Wallis Simpson and so ...”

“... into art – think of the lush bits of cited advertisements in paintings by Richard Hamilton or James Rosenquist – and the two-way traffic has continued ever since. Then, too, there is the notion of the artist as showman. Art-world impresarios existed before Surrealism – Marinetti qualifies, as does Tzara, not to mention, say, Courbet – but Dalí took ...”

“... and newspaper column, that secular sermonette. A lament for the well-meaning replacement of the King James Bible by more narrowly relevant versions reads like a transplanted think-piece. A passage describing the technicalities of roofing (‘with slate roof tiles your pitch can be as shallow as 33 degrees – with stone tiles you must allow 45 degrees ...”

“... making guest/ghost appearances in the other two; in the latest film, his son Harry, played by James Franco, now knowing who Spider-Man is, becomes the imaginatively named New Goblin, and follows in his father’s flight-pattern, riding an airborne missile-bearing skateboard, and duelling with Peter high about the Manhattan streets. Peter wins, needless to ...”

“... in 1967 of a drastically abbreviated and expurgated edition, incompetently edited by Robert Rhodes James, which was greeted with widespread ridicule and contemptuous comparison with Nicolson. After Coats died in 1990, the diaries passed to Channon’s son, Paul, who died in 2007. Now, with the encouragement of his children, three formidable volumes have ...”

“... out of it, or the title of the second anyway. Finn. Finnegan. It was here on 10 June 1904 that James Joyce met Nora Barnacle, who worked in the hotel. The two young strangers who had locked eyes stopped to talk, and they arranged to meet four days later outside the house where Sir William Wilde, eye surgeon to the queen in Ireland, if she should have ever ...”

“... who had the white pieces, castled on the queen’s side in an attempt to target Carlsen’s king by opening up the king’s side. This manoeuvre was a bit of a gamble. Though he had prepared a defence with an unusual rook move, he had exposed his king to Carlsen’s active ...”