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“... of writing from the US that the then editor Bill Buford labelled ‘dirty realism’, taking in Richard Ford, Raymond Carver, Bobbi Ann Mason and so on), has always belonged to her and her alone. ‘For me,’ she has written, this ‘no man’s land, a deeply specific isolation drenched in family stories and secrets, is a huge advantage for a ...”

“... alive on the page. At the close of the book his long-suffering wife walks out (‘I’m going to Boston! I’m going to Europe! It’s too late to touch me now!’), leaving her infuriatingly dedicated hunger-artist of a husband in the care of Amy Bellette, the young woman who has been acting as secretary, muse and, most likely, mistress to the great ...”

“... men were caught breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in June 1972, Richard Helms, then director of the CIA, refused to help with the cover-up. In February 1973, after his re-election, Nixon fired Helms and replaced him with James Schlesinger. In an initiative to regain public trust as the crisis escalated, Schlesinger announced ...”

“... terms are used quite casually by Dr Albert Wojnilower, director and chief economist of the First Boston Corporation, one of Wall Street’s most respected and influential investment banks. The banking industry is imbued with ‘the narcotic addiction of borrowing and the related phenomena of gambling and asset price speculation’, says Dr Wojnilower in ...”

“... another occasion, however, Coward does admit it. In 1955 he writes: Another book I am reading is Richard Aldington’s blistering, debunking attack on Lawrence of Arabia. I do not care for Richard Aldington’s mind, and his malice is a little too apparent; nevertheless quite a lot of it ’ as far as I have read ...”

“... loyal to jazz since the Thirties, and The Duke Ellington Reader is worth its price simply for Richard Boyer’s magnificent profile of the great man (‘The Hot Bach’), which first appeared there in 1944. It is safe to say that, at that time, in no American city outside New York would nightclubs like Café Society, militantly devoted to the social ...”

“... the years between 1860 and 1900, the historian of science Ann Norton Greene has noted, a banker in Boston would have seen more horses than a Colorado cowboy or a Texas rancher. Cities were crowded and smelled awful: horses left about 1100 tons of manure on the streets of New York every day, along with 71,000 gallons of urine. In place of honking taxis and ...”

“... it begins where the troubadour canon leaves off. Along with a handful of lyrics by Chaucer, Richard Rolle, and some less familiar names, it includes fifty anonymous poems of immense variety. Genres are defined loosely, if at all, and even such basic categories as ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ prove to be thoroughly intertwined. In place of the ...”

“... His father was a Harvard professor and Unitarian minister, his mother came from a distinguished Boston family. William James introduced the pair and became one of Edward Estlin’s godfathers. As well as the grand house at 104 Irving Street where he was born, Cummings’s family had a summer house in New Hampshire, which he would enjoy until the end of ...”

“... He does not mention the fact that Joe Kennedy lent 500,000 dollars to the publisher of the Boston Post once that paper had declared its Support for John Kennedy’s Senatorial campaign, or that he prevented his son from making the anti-McCarthy speeches that his Democratic aides had prepared (or that John Kennedy had supported Nixon’s Senatorial ...”

“... a new opiate painkiller called OxyContin. At a party celebrating its release to the public, Richard Sackler, a scion of the family that owns the company and its senior vice president of sales, made exuberant predictions about its success. ‘The launch of OxyContin tablets will be followed by a blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the ...”

“... is perhaps what makes James, in his late Prefaces, refer to the novelist as ‘the Poet’. For Richard Poirier in A World Elsewhere, James’s concern with form marks his concentration on the mind; Edith Wharton’s ‘satisfaction with the simple and sequential ordering of events’ in the chronicle-novel reflects her sense that experience is determined ...”

“... the tomb of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, beheaded in 1322, while Yorkists venerated their archbishop Richard Scrope, executed in 1405. Despite periodic repression, both cults persisted until the Reformation. Another class of dubious martyrs were children supposedly murdered by Jews, such as the hapless William of Norwich in 1144. William’s cult, obsessively ...”

“... a misplaced and unflinching faith in his own righteousness, but to trust his wife. Then there’s Richard Rycart, a former foreign secretary, sacked for opposing the war in Iraq, who now works for the UN. He’s more Dominique de Villepin than Robin Cook, with his handsome mane of grey hair and aquiline nose. Rycart is causing considerable trouble for ...”

“... off without anaesthetic. A few days later, he suffered another blow: the death of his infant son, Richard. Although the wound healed well, the recovery would have been gruelling. All the while, the invoices and orders kept piling up. At the time of his surgery, Wedgwood styled himself ‘Potter to Her Majesty’ Queen Charlotte and was on the way to becoming ...”