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“... a letter from mother of stale news she’d already relayed over the phone, a card from Oscar Williams inviting us to a cocktail party in New York on the impossible last day of my classes. No news.’ In late 1959, waiting for short story acceptances that would not come, she wrote in her journal: ‘Must not wait for mail as it ruins the day.’ Then the ...”

“... Sargent was the man of the hour. The following year, there was an all-British programme: Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Delius, Boughton and Walton, before Sargent concluded the programme with Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture and Serenade for Strings, followed by ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and the Sea Songs. For this 1948 final Prom, some Promenaders queued for ...”

“... diary entry from his honeymoon ‘early to bed/up late’. What they do show most forcibly is his joy in his children (he was a naturally sentimental man, who later wrote some rather cringe-making poems on the deaths of beloved pets). He was an indulgent, expressive father, and although the conventions of Victorian domestic economy hardly qualify him as a ...”

“... Ginsberg often claims to have issued indirectly from Whitman’s and directly from William Carlos Williams’s overcoat: but Williams’s presence of mind in language is quite different from Ginsberg’s, and his poems are far more fully composed. Most of Ginsberg’s poems document his time and collapse into it. They ...”

“... disaster for women: from 27 Deputies out of 491 they will diminish to 24 or 25 out of 577. Shirley Williams please note. What is true for women is also true for the young. The party bosses are naturally more susceptible to the powerful pressure of the senior sitting Deputies than to the claims of younger hopefuls with less bargaining power. It already seems ...”

“... in the letter Jane sent after her not only disappointment at ‘an absence of that frank and open joy she had hoped for’, but a conciliatory tone, as though she had put Cassandra in an awkward spot: ‘it might be unpleasant to you to be in the neighbourhood at the first burst of the business.’ Nokes offers no explanation, but by including this strange ...”

“... through. He theorised it in his 1938 lecture ‘On Fairy-Stories’ as ‘a fleeting glimpse of Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief’. He allegorised it in his 1947 short story, ‘Leaf by Niggle’, in which the hero paints ‘the only really beautiful picture in the world’, and then gets to walk about inside it. ‘As you walked, new ...”

“... Morland is clearly delighted to marry the entertaining Henry Tilney, the most intense part of her joy seems to derive from the fact that in doing so she also becomes ‘sister’ to his sister Eleanor, whose subtle approbation she has sought – and glowingly received – throughout the novel. But even Austen’s heroes are often more like sisters than lovers ...”

“... mother] revelled in the great flood of emotion that flowed through her, whether it was tears or joy. The child himself was not really seen.’ This was distressing, but it was also highly effective training for a life in Hollywood.Newman describes his mother as ‘the most suspicious woman who ever lived, hysterical with the thought she’d never be ...”

“... who was interested in a much looser, open style, as well as other Americans such as William Carlos Williams. Wavering between systems, Gunn didn’t please everyone. In August Kleinzahler’s introduction to the third Selected, which appeared in 2007 (the second came in 1979), Kleinzahler quoted two anthologists on the decline of Gunn. The first was ...”

“... Hardy’s life, and show how his sense of life, for all his affirmation that we are ‘inveterate joy-makers’, fed first and last off his sense of death. The many ghosts show it too – a shade in Stinsford churchyard, the souls gliding about the Reading Room in the BM, Prinny’s ghost beaming at the tarts in Regent’s Street. More than ghosts, it is the ...”

“... The first time I’ve been on a train without a nanny or a husband!’ Ariel’s language is a joy. About meeting Hitler she remarks: I was pregnant at the time so I wasn’t feeling very … brisk. Hitler said, “I only have four words in a foreign language,” the four words being: “Vous êtes mon prisonnier.” ’ 24 January. Note the hairstyle of ...”

“... but these days not permitted. 20 May. Nick Hytner is in the second week of rehearsals of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending at the Donmar. We chat in Maggie Smith’s dressing-room in the interval of The Lady in the Van, Maggie saying that Tennessee Williams had a distinctive laugh and when she was playing Hedda ...”

“... and down the country, and they visit them when travelling around to give out leaflets. ‘We feel joy at all this free food,’ Alf said. ‘And you also feel disgusted to see all this rubbish in the world.’ ‘We choose our ignorance, bro,’ said Martin as Alf stopped the van in a car park behind Somerfield. ‘Do you have a relationship with this ...”

“... poems in the magazine.Subsequently other people became stalwarts of a kind, didn’t they? Hugo Williams?Oh, they came in. David Harsent was another.Peter Dale?I think we published some of his poems. He never became quite one of the gang. There was a certain amount of indecision about him then. David Harsent appeared from nowhere. I think via the TLS. I was ...”