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“... slow to learn the new language, were something for Sundays or, in 1793-94, for Décadis. Colin Jones shows how the noble intention of the revolutionaries to substitute a national policy of bienfaisance for the erratic charity of the Ancien Régime fell victim to the consequences of expropriating the Church and the insatiable demands of total war. This ...”

“... at least as strong for disliking the editors of the Times Literary Supplement (successively Alan Pryce-Jones, Arthur Crook and John Gross) and indeed held the whole London literary world in contempt as a self-serving clique. He became a lecturer in 1936, already over forty, and a full lecturer at 52. MacKillop deals ...”

“... January, Yorkshire. Ring Mr Redhead, the coal-merchant at Ingleton.‘Hello, Mr Redhead, this is Alan Bennett. I’m wanting some coal.’‘Goodness me! I am consorting with higher beings!’Last time I rang Mr Redhead he said: ‘Well, I don’t care how celebrated you are, you’ll never be a patch on your dad.’ I remind him of this.‘That’s correct ...”

“... Bletchley Park to enable the British to regain the upper hand in the cryptographic struggle is not Alan Turing, however, but a neurotic Cambridge mathematician who fancies girls: Tom Jericho’s heart has been broken by a cruel, icy blonde who has mysteriously gone missing from Bletchley. Investigating her disappearance, Jericho also finds time to solve the ...”

“... might be short, his art matured at hectic speed. Its roots were among the Pre-Raphaelites. Burne-Jones was an early champion and the dishevelled androgynous figure in Withered Spring, a drawing of 1891, has the heavy, sensuous eyes and mouth of Jane Morris. A year later, in Incipit Vita Nova, they had gone. An impassive female head with closed eyes faces a ...”

“... the great issues of our time. In The Great War and Modern Memory he quotes with enthusiasm David Jones’s dodgy-sounding dictum that ‘the artist in man is the infantryman in man ... all men are aboriginally of this infantry, though not all serve with this infantry ... continued employment “away from the front” has made habitual and widespread a ...”

“... the same coarsening detectable nowadays when bishops are too much on television. 19 October. Alan Clark and Kenneth Clarke resurrected this lunchtime to comment on the arrest of Pinochet. Both routinely acknowledge Pinochet’s crimes, although Clark A. is careful to refer to them as ‘alleged’, probably because he didn’t actually hear the screams ...”

“... superseded species. But recently, things have boomed again. New careers (McEwan, Mac Laverty, Mars-Jones) have been founded on the short story. Other established writers have resourcefully played a two-handed game, writing full-length and short fiction turn and turn about. A learned journal has even been set up learnedly to study the form. As it has now ...”

“... want the nation’s press camped on your doorstep, is to say that you once had a wank in 1947.’ Alan Bennett’s remark is quoted with obvious feeling by Kenneth Dover in a late-inserted footnote to his autobiography, Marginal Comment. Someone, he explains, had leaked part of the typescript of his book to the Evening Standard, who, on the scent of celebrity ...”

“... those who don’t already know, these biographical details all apply to the author of the novel, Alan Sillitoe. This is to be a candidly, if not straightforwardly autobiographical work. It is also the concluding volume in the series that began with Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Arthur Seaton, the leading figure in that novel, has here only a walk-on ...”

“... in various characters is one of the satisfactions of the book. Its title is taken from a poem by Alan Shapiro (‘Song and Dance’), reproduced in part as its epigraph. Out of context it’s an opaque piece of work, the borrowed wording its most lucid moment. By removing the question mark in the poem, Clegg makes the formulation seem even more tentative and ...”

“... Cahun, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Hildegarde of Bingen – as if to meet a new cultural need. Alan Turing, who now has a government educational scheme named after him, was not only obscure but disgraced for more than a quarter-century after his death. Hinton isn’t of Turing’s calibre, and Blacklock doesn’t oversell him as a pioneer, though he quotes ...”

“... Peace talks. James Baker and Bush are determined to teach Saddam Hussein ‘a terrible lesson’. Alan Jenkins of TLS rang up at 7.15 p.m. to suggest I write article on two exhibitions in London next month: Man Ray photos at Barbican, Max Ernst at Tate. Thursday 10: Ron Stocker to lunch. Listened to ‘Schönberg in Hollywood’ on Radio 3. Wrote to thank ...”

“... Observer that I had discovered in the course of some research into ‘front’ organisations that Alan Hare, chairman of the Financial Times, no less, had a background in the Secret Service. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows that. He had to try quite hard to find work after he retired from there.’ The point seems to be that the Secret Service is not ...”

“... you will be delighted to know that a pub in the Yorkshire town of Otley is to be renamed the Alan Bennett in your honour in order to celebrate Yorkshire Day.’ Fortunately this bizarre baptism is only for a month; were it longer I fear it would soon be reflected in the takings. The body responsible for this kindly gesture is the Otley Pub Club, which ...”