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“... or that the largest picture on view would be a frothy, larky double portrait by Vanessa Bell of Mr and Mrs Maynard Keynes. The show is densely hung, with ten sections crammed into three rooms; but this rather serves as a confirmation of the hurlyburlyness of art’s history, and of how the continuing clamour of the past acts as a help, not a ...”

“... should all these babies pick on me?’ she wonders. After her son – Sandro in the novel, Julian in real life – was born Comyns terminated her next pregnancy. Abortion was still illegal and expensive. She and John begged the money from friends and, when there were complications, Comyns couldn’t go to hospital ‘because we would have all gone to ...”

“... only disability is that idealism must fail in the end: the world refuses to be transformed. In ‘Julian and Maddalo’ Shelley deals with his misgiving by giving it a separate hearing. Keach aptly refers to ‘Julian’s belief in the power of mind to dissolve and transform all impediments to ideal self-realisation, and ...”

“... a false narrative, a doorstep is smeared with shit, a dead cat is found hanging from the bell-pull, the words assassins and a mort are daubed on the shop’s blind. The police are only half-helpful: as one investigating officer says to another, ‘It smells of Kraut in here.’ The Krulls decide – not inaccurately – that Hans is the bringer, or ...”

“... distinguished by the most alliterative opening sentences I have ever read’. (‘Boom! went the bell of St Botolph’s, bidding her boys from book and board. Clang! came the curfew of Carfax, calling the citizens from counter and cloth-yard.’) From time to time Bernard would show up in Sussex and bark orders in ‘his military voice’ – he had others ...”

“... He follows the ploughmen, throwing clods of earth at the crows; he minds turkeys and does a little bell-ringing. Flaubert awards such activities a paragraph, and then summarises the consequences of this pre-adolescent life in two short sentences which he pointedly sets out as a separate paragraph: ‘Aussi poussa-t-il comme un chêne. Il acquit de fortes ...”

“... of their mothers before they married. In one of the pseudonymously offered novels under review, Julian Barnes writes as ‘Dan Kavanagh’, having recently married Pat Kavanagh, the literary agent, who is the dedicatee of Duffy. Harder to crack is the pseudonymous code of Michael Crichton, the omnicompetent ‘movelist’. (He is author of The Andromeda ...”

“... In a chapter called ‘Etonians and Estonians’, the home team emerge as comfortable winners. Julian Critchley, that eloquent chronicler of a ‘peasants’ revolt’ among Conservative MPs during his own career, is brought on to recite his party piece about how he was reprimanded in the late Fifties for wearing suede shoes in the division lobby. The ...”

“... and rather frightening when people ignore, or don’t understand, jokes made at their expense. Julian Barnes once wrote a salutary essay on this, recalling the great Monty Python sketch about an obscure island completely inhabited by men sounding and looking like Alan Whicker. They paced to and fro, droning horribly and trailing microphones. It was, as ...”

“... to the ‘Picture Palace’ in her diaries and wrote an essay on ‘The Cinema’ in 1926. Clive Bell wrote two articles on cinema in the 1920s; the Hogarth Press published two pamphlets on film by the music critic Eric Walter White; and Roger Fry, in ‘An Essay in Aesthetics’ (1909), mentioned that it was only when he watched a ‘cinematograph’ that ...”

“... chucked at the officials who gave prizes to Gilbert and George and at the critics who acclaimed Julian Schnabel, begin to wonder whether we might be mistaken for part of the congregation – or is it a rally? – and find ourselves having to kneel, or sing the National Anthem. The subject of art schools is raised. Will Fuller have some ideas for reforming ...”

“... least innocent amusement.’ Shelley was aware of his reputation for high-minded solemnity – ‘Julian is rather serious,’ he said of his self-portrait in ‘Julian and Maddalo’, a poem of exquisitely high spirits that breathes his gratitude for Byron’s friendship and good humour. ‘Perhaps no one will believe in ...”

“... and stays fucked for the next five thousand years.’)His last novel, Purity (2015), featured a Julian Assange-ish anti-corruption activist, which allowed Franzen to go whole hog on the rottenness of techno-capitalism. When James Meek reviewed the novel for the LRB (24 September 2015), he argued that too much of it read like ‘extracts from workaday ...”

“... It is also a little odd of her to suppose that such businessmen as J.D. Allcroft, Sir Isaac Bell and Lord Armstrong (a newly created peer, and therefore quite properly middle-class according to Macleod’s definition) were slipping from the aristocratic embrace because they erected vast new country houses for themselves rather than buying old ones. On ...”

“... writer,’ he replies: ‘I write too.’ Then he asks her: ‘Tell me, do you enjoy the novels of ...”