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“... Gasp at the scale model. Blush at the hubris of the promotional displays. Giant blow-ups of ‘Richard Rogers’s original sketch of the Greenwich Dome’ are twinned with ‘a sketch design for a dome by Sir Christopher Wren’. The puny scale of St Paul’s Cathedral is set against the enclosed acres of the tent on Bugsby’s Marshes. ‘This awesome ...”

“... Lobby Practice, the slimmest of slim volumes, bound in burgundy rexine, which carries among other stern injunctions – ‘Do not “see” anything in the Members’ Lobby’, ‘Do not run after a minister’ – the overarching commandment: ‘Members of the lobby are under an obligation to keep secret the fact that such meetings are held and to avoid ...”

“... is famous for two things: her intense screen beauty and her many marriages (eight of them, two to Richard Burton). But at least as central to her life were her close and enduring friendships with men, some gay (like Rock Hudson), others heterosexual (like Farrell). Sometimes, Farrell took her to the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she had been ...”

“... civil art’, when Hartman feels admiring, ‘a civil jargon’ when he doesn’t. He can be stern on the subject; tea and totality don’t mix, he says, though the British are always trying to mix them. When critics like me try to ‘translate’ ‘rebarbative concepts from German hermeneutics’ into ‘ordinary speech’ they let too much of the ...”

“... monster, lionised by London hostesses as a man who did savage things in exotic lands, like Sir Richard Burton, later in the century. But that would be too absurd. ‘The proposed victim looked so thoroughly capable of enjoying life (if he could only get to the other side of the river) that I thought it would be hard for him to die, merely in order to give ...”

“... there in 1878. She went to seek respite from her passionate but unconsummated love affair with Richard Doughty-Wylie (nephew of the great explorer Charles Doughty), whom she had met when he was British Consul in Konya. Doughty-Wylie was married, and was not prepared to risk his career by leaving his wife. A man with physical courage to match ...”

“... the Vietnam War piled so high that the US began to face a run on its gold reserves. In 1971, Richard Nixon removed the dollar’s peg to gold – effectively bringing Bretton Woods to an end – rather than raising interest rates to staunch the outflow of gold, which would probably have caused a recession (with an election on the horizon). Before ...”

“... in the Appeal to Reason, to which his agrarian socialist father subscribed. He grew up in a stern religious world that idolised the country but could only afford to hustle in the city (the Disneys lost their farm in Marceline after just two years), that hated Capital and favoured Labour, but really needed to make a buck. Walt’s father, Elias ...”

“... around in a very characteristic way, and blurted out his answer in a fast, high-pitched voice. ‘Richard,’ he said, ‘I think I see exactly what you mean, and it’s fascinating, but really I don’t see why "suburban". Aren’t you trying to be too – specific? I don’t see why suburban has anything to do with it. I really don’t think it has.’ At ...”

“... with the usual CalMac white superstructure above a black hull, dips in a curve towards the stern, aiming to give an impression of speed, power and modernity. A century ago liners sometimes had an unnecessary third or fourth funnel to achieve the same effect.The Comet was built only a short walk from Ferguson’s, on land once covered in ...”

“... were ‘too many Jews’ in their ranks. Perhaps noticing my Western flinch, he added, in the same stern manner: ‘I am not an anti-semite! My wife was Jewish, and we were always close.’ His eyes moistened, and he turned away a little, saying: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ There were lots of media, the cameras and interviewers seeking out the stars, wanting to know ...”

“... countryside, ambled through the gates of the Caravanserai’). But for Stalin, Tiflis meant a stern seminary education and, running parallel to this, his induction, first into the world of literature forbidden by the seminary, from Zola and Victor Hugo to Tolstoy and Saltykov-Shchedrin, and then into the world of revolution. While Stalin was still a ...”

“... on which African Americans stood. ‘White people had Judy Garland. We had Nina,’ the comedian Richard Pryor said. Simone’s voice answered the radical call for a profound articulation of the Black Tradition and incidentally made her ‘the patron saint of rebellion’, according to Crouch. Her singing, an African-American critic wrote in the Philadelphia ...”

“... Slow), he is the encouraging old pro, spreading the largesse. He recognised and recommended Richard Yates (Revolutionary Road), ‘an all-around swell cat’. The literary shoptalk in these letters is free of jargon and brimming with embattled fellow-feeling. Commiseration and comradeship are the dominant chords, although the competitive drive to be the ...”

“... of International Politics which he could legitimately have expected. The Master of Balliol, the stern Calvinist Lindsay Keir, disliked everything about Carr – his affairs, his politics, his past, his present, even his dress (he used to pad about the college in sand-shoes). Carr was the obvious candidate for the Chair, when it fell vacant, but a palace ...”