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“... even if she seems it now. But she also dreamed of a rare type of marriage, one ‘in which we would be companions and friends, a marriage in which each member would perform his or her role, and in which neither role, least of all the kitchen one, was looked down upon’. If she had found that, she might have succumbed. As it was, she accepted a visit ...”

“... again, having merely reread his old copy, and rung up a literary editor on impulse. In due course we lunched with each other, met from time to time afterwards (though never often), and continued to correspond fitfully until Brooke’s death in 1966. All writers, one way or another, depend ultimately on their own lives for the material of their books, but the ...”

“... without forging himself much of an alternative identity beyond the one provided by his high-end, Somerset Maugham-like notion of the writing life. He wore ‘perfectly made’ suits and, when taxed about his drinking, could always name three bigger pissheads among his fellow members of the Savile Club. During the war he acquired a Raffles-style flat in ...”

“... he said: “But now that you have found me out, you must run down here as often as you can, and we will have a good game at something – You don’t know what fun it is.”’ Finding his father out was something Arthur spent a lifetime failing to do. The dream he recorded in his diary in 1916 at the age of 53 is poignant because it made a travesty of his ...”

“... The period​ in Francis Bacon’s life between 1933 and 1944 remains a mystery. We know who he was seeing and where he was living. We know what he painted: in 1933, when he was 23, his Crucifixion that looks like an X-ray; eleven years later, the contortions of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion ...”

“... Willie Chandran, full name Willie Somerset Chandran, is the son of a somewhat eccentric minor official in an Indian state. The novelist, conscientiously researching his final masterpiece, The Razor’s Edge, had visited the maharajah and taken notice of Willie’s father, who happened to be doing penance and, on the model of Gandhi, observing a vow of silence in the temple courtyard ...”

“... a young New Zealand hotel-keeper. Vickery’s fate becomes preternaturally vivid to us, but we never directly see either of the two persons concerned, or understand fully the motivations involved. The gentle and amiable Pritchard, a ‘woman’s man, struggles to communicate the extreme female charm possessed by Mrs Bathurst, known and agreed by both ...”

“... that really seemed to make sense. The opening proposition still fills me with huge excitement: ‘We do not go to bed in simple pairs: even if we choose not to refer to them, we still drag there with us the cultural impedimenta of our social class, our parents’ lives, our bank ...”

“... writers in question, and even to their enemies; the classic document on the fears of the latter is Somerset Maugham’s attack on Lucky Jim. But Maugham and Amis became quite good friends after a while, and of course there never was anything very proletarian about the Movement. Most of its members were formed under the ...”

“... unsparing and funny pieces on poetry, on novels – and on football. He will be missed more than we can say.Where shall we begin? How far back do you want to go?Why don’t we go back to the Battle of Bannockburn?No, not that far. Your schooling. Your birthplace.King’s Lynn. I was born ...”