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“... during the period of suspense that ends just before the grand dinner at Stationers’ Hall; the winner gets an extra bonus of more sales; and the sponsors presumably do at least as well out of the enterprise as they would by spending the same amount of cash on cricket or golf. Although Booker has a financial stake in some best-selling writers, their ...”

“... right, but he was lying with such charm, verve and enthusiasm that he looked and sounded like a winner. The case seemed lost. The dramatic story of how Aitken was finally defeated by his own lies is superbly set out in the final chapters of this book. The truth came out not by due process of law, but thanks to a mixture of journalistic diligence and sheer ...”

“... game.) They have better players than we do; but it is possible that we are a better team. David Beckham has flown his hairdresser out to Japan, allegedly because Victoria noticed that his mohican was looking scraggly. (As opposed, of course, to completely twuntish.) There is a theory that he is going to try out a whole new hairstyle for the Brazil ...”

“... two otherwise evenly matched teams, when the home side will usually be the one pressing for a winner. Moskowitz and Wertheim say that’s because the referee is allowing it to happen: what we think is a quality belonging to the players is actually a quality we have misattributed to them because of the indulgence of the officials. But that’s not really ...”

“... in the public mind the man who ‘lost everything save honour’. Blair, by contrast, is the winner who seems unable to do anything to reclaim his honour. The risk Blair took in going to war in Iraq was not that he would lose, but that he would win too little for what he had been willing to stake, and end up looking like a fool. This now appears to be ...”

“... to recover from its association with a dominant imperialism, and not just in Latin America. David Stoll is another talented US academic, from a younger generation, specialising in Central America, and with a particular interest in Guatemala, about which he has written a couple of interesting, and indeed path-breaking books. Is Latin America Turning ...”

“... simpler theories on other grounds, and conjecture that they are true – and we may be wrong. As David Miller puts it in his interesting, if brisk article in the festschrift, Popper’s view that ‘reality, though unknown, is in some respects similar to what science tells us’ is ‘a consequence of what science tells us, not an assumption science has to ...”

“... outstripped anyone’s claim to possess their own story. Here he is writing to his oldest friend, David Peltz, who is thinly fictionalised as Woody Selbst in the story ‘A Silver Dish’ and as George Swiebel in Humboldt’s Gift. ‘What matters,’ Bellow wrote to Peltz when he complained of being used, is that good things get written … We’ve known ...”

“... tough keeping track of all the debutantes promenading into print and creating a stir: Donna Tartt, David Leavitt, Mary Gaitskill, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Nancy Lemann, Susan Minot, Mary Robison, Anderson Ferrell – a cast of dozens. Many of those rookies trained at the literary dojo of the author, editor, creative writing teacher and guru-mentor-mindgamer ...”

“... for the family firm, fundamentally different characters. The wonder, however, is not that ‘David’ should have turned out badly but that ‘Bertie’ should have turned out so well. (There were two more brothers, ‘Harry’ of Gloucester and George of Kent, whose capacity for kingship, had the succession moved further down the line, was for different ...”

“... reader a recognisable stock character. This is Ronald Reagan, here renamed President O’Reilly. (David Lodge’s version, ‘Ronald Ruck’, was funnier.) D.M. Thomas offers a farcical interview with President O’Reilly in which the old man is so confused that he can only answer the question before the last:     ‘What is your outlook on ...”

“... literary company. Between the lines, you glimpse a lovable character bursting with curiosity: a David Attenborough of the cultural world, taking pleasure in every manifestation of symbolic activity from the humblest to the most magnificent. (He even embraced some snarky barbs directed at him by Heidegger and his students.) This congenial impression is ...”

“... T.E. Lawrence was one of history’s winners and one of its great losers. He was a winner in terms of the mythology that surrounded his reputation both in his own day and afterwards, as reflected in the 1962 David Lean biopic, presenting him as the romantic hero – tall, blue-eyed, in flowing robes – he always wanted to be ...”

“... was always ready with the smiling inquiry about his old paper: ‘How are you all getting on?’ David Horspool I did not know John well personally but I did know him as an editor of great distinction. He brought out the best in me. His wit and taste and high standards made me better than I am. I am grateful to him and mourn his death. Thomas Laqueur John ...”

“... he might be tempted to make such a barely thinkable journey, it was now. He was 31, famous for the David and the Pietà, but his dealings with the pope were deadlocked. If Europe’s ultimate patron was being difficult, perhaps a more obliging one could be found elsewhere. In his author’s note, Enard cannily stops short of asserting the factuality of the ...”