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“... emptiness, infinity’ – and also the colour of adornment, and a reminder of Charlie Parker, blueberries, even ‘blue’ films. Yellow, in contrast, is always the sun but also a stain, and the yellowest thing is saffron, ‘both a stain and a taste’.I keep having to remind myself that Berger, despite his concentrated seriousness, is quite ...”

“... traffic – more roads produce more cars, and congestion soon becomes as bad as it was before. Ian Parker describes in Autopia how a signal engineer got vehicles flowing again at the Hanger Lane gyratory system in London by finding seven ‘spare’ seconds in a nearby set of traffic lights. When this time was redistributed between other lights, the traffic in ...”

“... and perhaps novel about Rupert is that he has no respect at all. Take the case of Lorraine and Peter Landau, a couple in Northwood, who took time from what one presumes was a busy schedule to write to Rupert, having seen him in The Vortex, to comment on ‘the audibility of my performance in rather pompous terms’. Rupert opened the letter while ‘deeply ...”

“... New Testament, beaming from a candle on a candle-stick round whose column cluster St Paul and St Peter, and whose base is supported by the symbols of the Evangelists. Groping their purblind way from the light, their backs turned to it, towards a pit, is a group of scholars and dignitaries, chiefly churchmen, headed by the Pope. Aristotle, the ...”

“... was drawn around their proceedings, and the public was evicted. When the public was readmitted, Mr Peter Treadwater QC was concluding his submission on behalf of the Fourth Estate. Your reporter was only able to catch the words ‘the ancient and inviolable rights of the free press’, drowned by the hissing of court ushers. Their Lordships then adjourned for ...”

“... who alternate between starving and gorging themselves. (The novel was turned into a film by Alan Parker, starring Anthony Hopkins, John Cusack and Bridget Fonda.) In A Friend of the Earth Boyle turns his squinting attention to environmentalism, creating a disconcerting marriage of farce and prophecy: he doesn’t doubt the looming apocalypse; he merely ...”

“... of using surnames as first names, pointing to Grevill Varney, Bassingburne Gawdy and Calthorp Parker: ‘Although many dislike it, for the great inconvenience that will ensue … neverthelesse it seemeth to proceede from … a desire to continue and propagate their owne names to succeeding ages.’Continuing a trend that had begun in the 15th ...”

“... on the subject. A volume did appear in 1988 – English Extremists, written with Deyan Sudjic and Peter Cook, celebrating the postmodern architects Campbell Zogolovitch Wilson Gough – but since then his medium has been television. Meades has never been a fully paid-up architectural correspondent; he argues in Museum without Walls that taking up such a job ...”

“... later played down the importance of his partnership with Ronson. In The Man Who Sold the World, Peter Doggett quotes from an interview with Melody Maker at the beginning of 1976 (though you can’t really trust anything Bowie said in that period): ‘I honestly can’t remember Mick that well these days,’ he said. ‘He’s just like any other band member ...”

“... species Banville loves to scrutinise. And Banville has always written well about drink. Robert B. Parker, the last novelist to try on Chandler’s shoes, was a three-books-a-year man – his main hero was a private eye called Spenser – who’d done a PhD on hardboiled literature. His first effort, Poodle Springs (1989), was hampered by a set-up sketched and ...”

“... best American films; all-time favourite singles, as requested by a newspaper called the Tufnell Parker. ‘But where have they gone, all these records I’ve had in my head for years, just in case Roy Plomley or Michael Parkinson or Sue Lawley or whoever used to do My Top Twelve on Radio One asked me in as a late and admittedly unknown replacement for ...”

“... in Durban) the NUSAS leadership included non-whites like Thami Mhlambiso, Rogers Ragavan and Kenny Parker, all of whom whites like myself were proud to follow. (Thami would also have found Sampson’s determination to find no Communist influence in the ANC a little perplexing. We used to meet in his office under a giant poster of Mao.) Similarly, Sampson ...”

“... club to Styles, and then back to the club. Agatha’s only friend was her wire-haired terrier, Peter. In December she cracked. Packing a suitcase with an odd assortment of effects, and putting on a money belt containing several hundred pounds, she drove south. At Newlands Corner she seems to have had a slight accident. Leaving her car, she walked to ...”

“... specialisms, as contributors to the Belagio Conference on the New History recognised. The need, as Peter Temin said on that occasion, is to get economics to take account of the diversity of human behaviour. It was the integration of the history of social behaviour and economics which Finley aimed to achieve in The Ancient Economy, and the same goal now leads ...”

“... All suicide, we are to believe, is painful, messy, undignified and inconvenient. Or as Dorothy Parker (an inveterate botcher of suicide) put it: Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. Britain’s policy of benign censorship keeps the annual ...”