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“... In Elizabeth Taylor’s novel The Wedding Group, published in 1968, there is a grand old painter called Harry Bretton. He is modelled, I would guess, on Eric Gill, for the Life, and Stanley Spencer, for the Work. Musing by the studio window, he considers his place in history: Turner was the greatest English painter, and was safely dead, did not encroach or suggest comparisons ...”

“... we never know. But his next step was to enter into a contract of marriage with his ward, Elizabeth Lady Lisle, whose title he had taken. Elizabeth was only eight but she was an heiress and the move took her off the market till she grew up, giving Charles the use of her resources. As long as the marriage was ...”

“... at home, from the wheeled-on generals, the reconstituted images of bunkers caving in to ‘smart’ technology, the gameshow ‘debates’ or, indeed, from the grace under pressure of the BBC presenters, hypothesising in the Newsnight sandpit. Kelly is not quite right to call his book an ‘impressionistic account’ of the war, merely because it deals ...”

“... Nothing makes a Britfem feel more parochial than to see one of the Americans fill the Queen Elizabeth Hall to capacity when she is grateful to be asked to a local bookshop. For years now, British feminism has been desperately trying to achieve mainstream appeal. Catchy booktitles, styled photographs, radio and television appearances have done their bit ...”

“... who died before the writer was born. His father, both drunk and sober, would talk to him about Elizabeth, always adding that she should have lived and he, the boy, should have died; he was ‘questioning my right even to occupy space in his world’. John had a younger sister too, called Margaret. They were haunted children, he suggests. Margaret had ...”

“... work by eight poets: Robert Conquest, D.J. Enright, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, John Holloway, Elizabeth Jennings, Philip Larkin and John Wain, to which list Conquest’s volume added the name of Thom Gunn. Insofar as there has ever been agreement on the matter, the Movement has been taken to consist of these nine writers. They appeared in these ...”

“... York. Even successful Japanese labels such as Shiseido and Shu Uemura had to act French. Another smart move on Rimmel’s part was to obtain warrants for his products from ten European royal families. His was the scent of royalty. His packages were blessed with the aura of celebrity, in much the same way as Glow by J.Lo, a dull floral perfume, sold $1.7 ...”

“... in Margaret Thatcher, or London’s remote television ceremonies. She meant as much to them as Elizabeth I, who schlepped down here to deliver her rousing speech to the troops at the time of the Spanish Armada. The Railport was booming, but passenger transit and human immigration were over. All the platforms – spectacular ruins at the time of my last ...”

“... during the late 1740s and 1750s (among them Pope’s friend Ralph Allen and the bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu) and did well from the subscription sales of her novels, but it’s less clear how Collier managed. The Cry was written and published during the years Fielding and Collier lodged together in London, in Beauford Buildings just off the Strand. The ...”

“... comes into my mind, is Nessa & my jealousy of each other’s clothes! I feel her, when I put on my smart black fringed cape, anguished for a second: did I get it from Champco?’ Todd continued the Bloomsbury association – between 1923 and 1927 there were more than two hundred contributions by or about the group. Clive Bell went to the Paris ...”

“... in the manner of James Joyce whom Mitchell admired above all other moderns; a life and times of a smart and funny woman who hung out with New Yorker writers and married one of them; a big personality piece about an Italian carter named Joe Cantalupo who was a fixture of the Fulton Fish Market, subject of some of Mitchell’s best writing. Mitchell took all ...”

“... and unsentimental in its judgments. Barack Obama Sr emerges as a minor tragic figure. He was smart, ambitious and eager to join the first generation of Kenyans to govern their country after the end of British rule. He was also afflicted by overweening arrogance, dogmatic certainty and a self-destructive fondness for Johnnie Walker Black. In spite of his ...”

“... sharply flavoured work (the Complete Poems are with difficulty bulked up to 240 pages: they make Elizabeth Bishop look lax if not garrulous); for the unusual way time – history – is precipitated in a literary life. ‘Bunting had a knack of being in the thick of things,’ Richard Burton observes in this first proper biography: it feels like a flagrant ...”

“... appearance – was pleased when John Holms told her she looked like ‘a something Queen Elizabeth’. The missing adjective was ‘Surbiton’, which she would not have liked, though she was capable of accepting far crueller truths about herself than most people could dream up for her. She didn’t doubt the doctor who told her she had the nature of ...”

“... whose wealthy but very dysfunctional family introduced what a later commentator called ‘a pretty smart touch of insanity’ into the Foote genes. His early years are typical enough of a spendthrift younger son battling his way out of provincial obscurity: a curtailed career at Oxford noted mainly for its bibulousness; a failed business venture in the ...”