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“... versions.25 September. ‘I am not going to affect the livery of the time’s prudery’ (R.S. Thomas).3 October. Reading a piece on universities in the TLS brings back Richard Pares, whose last course of lectures I went to at Oxford in 1957. He was plainly dying, lecturing from a wheelchair and barely audible, with another don turning over the pages of ...”

“... the reformer Granville Sharp prosecuted a man named Stapylton who had taken his runaway slave, Thomas Lewis, forcibly on board ship. The trial judge, Lord Mansfield, tried to evade the moral issue by directing the jury that the case depended simply on whether Lewis was Stapylton’s property. The jury returned a verdict that Lewis was not, but Mansfield ...”

“... and saw himself as ‘a spirit that was once a man’. The white pyramid depicted by Hablot Browne in his engraving of the churchyard is beyond our reach. The author of sensationalist ‘yellow peril’ fictions, Sax Rohmer, had a particular interest in this pyramid. It was known to his evil genius, Fu Manchu, with his fiendish plots and intimacy with ...”

“... Row, hope to bump into no one between here and the bank, especially not Gerald Dawe or Vincent Browne, who both have offices there. Nothing against them really, but it’s mid-December, no time for meeting anyone. Pass by Sweney’s Chemist. Lemon soap. Viagra nowadays, Bloom would buy. Lemon Viagra. Mr Beamish the old bank manager gone now, gave me money ...”

“... an ex-Cluniac monastery that was among the properties (they included Kirkstall Abbey) granted to Thomas Cranmer on the death of Henry VIII. It wasn’t actually included in the royal will but was part of the general share-out that occurred then to fulfil the wishes supposedly expressed by Henry VIII on his deathbed. Not far away is Harewood House (where I do ...”