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“... many of a remarkably high quality and superbly illustrated with 380 images in colour and black and white. The essays range from Ancient Greece, Rome and Israel to Medieval and modern Europe; from the civilisations of China and Japan to those of Melanesia and the Aztecs. The bibliography, compiled by Barbara Duden, leaves no doubt as to the vast quantity of ...”

“... and ends in a section called Marginalia and plenty of good humour. Alongside the crisp black and white photographs of pristine new buildings were colour pages, showing Shell posters or School Prints, work by Graham Sutherland, Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash. As early as May 1930, another editor, Betjeman’s mentor Philip Morton Shand, part of whose enviable ...”

“... antique-dealer, complimenting the young Welch as a ‘handsome youth’, gives him a Ming blue-and-white artist’s brush pot. I flushed with pleasure and embarrassment as the dealer passed the brush pot to me. Before he put it in my hands he caressed it with a show of love; then he smacked his lips hungrily, as if he found it very delicious.    I held ...”

“... that the question doesn’t call for an answer at all. It is as true now as it was in the days of William Morris that you only have to walk from one part of London to another with your eyes and ears – and nose – open to be aware that some people have a great deal more money than they need and other people a great deal less. Maybe Harrison’s informants ...”

“... The Cordon Bleu to the War is gone,     In the ranks of death you’ll find him. His snow-white apron is girded on     And his magic stove behind him. ‘Army beef,’ says the Cordon Bleu,     ‘Though a stupid bungler slays thee, One skilful hand thy steaks shall stew,     One artist’s pan shall braise thee.’ (That field ...”

“... art Alsop gives us a previously unpublished quatrain by Dorothy Parker on a picture given by William Randolph Hearst to his mistress: Upon my honour, I saw a Madonna Hanging within a niche Above the door of the private whore Of the world’s worst son of a bitch. I’m not sure that this is so inappropriate (whores have often had devotional ...”

“... of her to jib at the word ‘stream’ when May Sinclair, writing of her novels in 1918, used William James’s ‘stream of consciousness’ to describe them. ‘Pool’, she thought, would have done better. She began writing Pilgrimage in 1913, the year when The White Peacock and Du Côté de Chez Swann were published ...”

“... avant garde, of American talent was centred on London. Well, not all: Dreiser, Eugene O’Neill, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens (like Pound and his protégés, an early contributor to Poetry, Chicago) stayed behind; so did the group of young painters and photographers associated with Alfred Stieglitz’s quarterly Camera Work. Besides, it was ...”

“... no sign that sex had much to do with the horrors of the camps. The neat juxtapositions in The White Hotel of psyche and history, of delusions of sexual violence and the massacre at Babi Yar, are of course a novelist’s trick, or perhaps a poet’s metaphor, but in any case have been found contrived and trivialising. There may be more to say for the ...”

“... hints from Baudelaire and his Gallic followers. The hero of the first novella writes mysteries as William Wilson, and gets involved in a case by taking a chance on a wrong number and doubling as the private eye asked for, Paul Auster ‘of the Auster Detective Agency’. In fact, the ingeniously-constructed Trilogy is peppered with references to Auster ...”

“... begins, least lightly. His first paragraph is a model: No conquest is free of catastrophe. Duke William came and took what he wanted. And of course there were those who got hurt. But obvious though that is, revisionist historians today dwell less on the changes imposed by the Normans than on what they were content to leave alone. That is not the way it ...”

“... with fat; an ox’s head with the skin slightly shrivelled, one dark eye open; links of red and white sausages, still more sausages, and pigs’ trotters; pale butter, dripping; draped tripe; feathered chickens with their necks slit open; a lung hanging by a windpipe; a pig’s head with near translucent ears; bowls of rendered lard to be sold by the ...”

“... turn up to see you wearing a snug designer jacket, really saggy jeans or super-tight leggings, and white sneakers. They’ll be carrying an eco bag: not any old cotton tote, but one that’s trending on Instagram – the LRB tote perhaps. Baseball caps and dramatic eyewear are among the most popular accessories. Unlike the urban middle-class generation that ...”

“... as a child, though I read about polar explorers and enjoyed the mise-en-scène of polar bears, white-outs, ice floes and the rest, the word ‘north’ exercised over me little of the magic it has for so many others, including Kavenna and Peter Davidson. ‘The Idea of North’ was the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s phrase and the title of a radio ...”

“... Eternal Club, the Jelly Bag Society, or the Town Smarts, whose members decked themselves out in white stockings, silver buckles and frilly shirts; and after dining at one of these, you could go on to the catch club, the poetry and philosophical club, the bell-ringing club, the antiquarian society, or a variety of benefit, cricket, botanical, rowing and ...”