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“... that Hockney should not have been hurt by Robert Hughes’s description of him as ‘the Cole Porter of modern art’. He has been true to his talent, which is great, and avoided boredom for himself and his audience by turning to photography, computer graphics or Picasso when a line of development did not seem to be leading to anything new. Perhaps his ...”

“... at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, sold out and had adulatory reviews. The Shankars met Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller, and over the next few years travelled all over Europe and eventually to the US, where Ravi heard Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong, beginning a lifelong ...”

“... of England’, ‘4. or 5 different shap’d snuffboxes’) in the care of the marquis’s porter and entered Wolton’s service at the end of June. Their route lay east and southwards, through Reims, Metz, Nancy and Dijon to Lyon. In each city they set up a riding space in the yard of an inn or on a patch of grass, publicised Wolton’s bareback ...”

“... contribution to the discredited field of historical analogy (Brexit as the modern equivalent of Henry VIII’s break with the papacy). The main emphasis, though, was on Danish financial interests. The headline that no doubt mattered most in this pro-business paper was ‘Brexit Puts Pressure on Danish Investments in the UK’. The leftish Information ...”

“... Henry James writes of a very grand lady that she had ‘an air of keeping, at every moment, every advantage’. Paradoxically, the same would be true of the literary personality of Elias Canetti. Behind its approachable modesty, its avoidance of every publicity and image-making process, there is a loftiness, an assurance, a stance of absolute superiority ...”

“... memory of Plath – an argument that certainly pushes to a new level of sophistication the Cole Porter lyric ‘I’m always true to you darling in my fashion’ – it’s hard not to feel that Hughes never escaped the baffling labyrinth into which his relationship with Plath led him. It is to the doomed Minotaur rather than the heroic Theseus that he ...”

“... himself from the funeral, ‘very little regretted even by his nearest acquaintance’, or as Henry Fielding put it more bluntly, ‘pissed upon with scorn and contempt’. Foote’s celebrity status can be measured in the proliferation of theatrical prints and paintings of him onstage, working the audience with his idiosyncratic blend of goofy humour and ...”

“... the military (he became a pacifist), the aristocracy (he followed the American writer Henry George in believing in common ownership of land) and the Orthodox Church (which excommunicated him) – increased his stature in revolutionary times, as did the government’s hostility towards him and the fact that he was sufficiently engaged in reality to ...”

“... he would find it. And so he does, computer, keys and cards all intact and handed over by a smiling porter called, appropriately, Christian. An empty train to Leeds and another to Settle and we are back home by five having buttered toast round the fire and unable to believe our luck. A good beginning to the year.3 February. The front of the ...”

“... plotting revolution with Gogarty upstairs in the Bailey over fried chops, dried chips and black porter. James Joyce selling tickets in Ireland’s first cinema on Talbot Street. The lies poured like Niagara. ‘Knew them all! Perfectly ordinary people! Drop in here for a drink and a chat just as we’re doing now! All that Renaissance stuff is pure ...”

“... stamping of feet was our reply. 9 Supper. The regal dining hall graced by the likeness of Henry the Eighth – those tight-sheathed calves, that beard – all by the sumptuous Holbein limned; inside that singularly towering hall that choir lofts made appear so tall, it was perpetually murky despite the violet conflagration, that filtered through the ...”

“... at last arrived. Not particularly memorable, one church does have a noteworthy memorial:Richard Henry Burden Cattell M.A.Rector of the Warhams 1928-1947Captain of the English Rugby Football team 1900Chaplain to the Forces at Gallipoli 1915.This tablet is placed here in remembrance by his seven daughters.It’s a novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett.6 August. All ...”

“... Views on Everything (‘Yes, Terry, I do know all the lesser-known Handel operas. I told Andrew Porter he was right – they are the greatest of musical masterpieces’). I was rapt, like a hysterical spinster on her first visit to Bayreuth. Schwärmerei time for T-Ball.The Sarajevo obsession revealed itself early on: in fact, inspired the great comic ...”

“... for me, putting lines unwritten by me, in my voice’. Reviewing a biography of Katherine Anne Porter, in 1982, she was clearly drawing on bitter experience:Our power of documentation has a monstrous life of its own, a greater vivacity than any lived existence. It makes form out of particles and finds attitude in a remembered drunken remark as easily as in ...”

“... when going by train from Leeds to Morecambe on holiday you knew you were nearly there when the porter came along the platform shouting the mysterious invocation ‘Lancaster Green Ayre’.11 March. R.’s Aunty Stella rings from Edinburgh. She was 90 last week and apologises that she hasn’t learned a new Shakespeare sonnet to mark her birthday. However ...”