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“... Adam Bede.Q. Where in Oxford would you find a crucifix that had been gazed on by Pascal?A. Campion Hall. (It is a Jansenist crucifix which comes from Port Royal.)Q. What had A.E. Housman in common with the son of the author of Wind in the Willows?A. A nickname: Mouse.Tell the Bede story to Maggie Smith, who recalls some lines she had to sing in revue:Oh, I am ...”

“... that was so tight it gave her a headache. Difficulties with clothes occur in many of her books. Peter Rabbit’s expression of resigned discomfort as his mother buttons his coat up too tightly under his chin, Tom Kitten’s wide-eyed dismay as the buttons fly off his Sunday suit, and numerous accidents to pinafores are among the details that give the tales ...”

“... For us​ ,’ Steffen Ahrends told his son Peter, who was born in Berlin in 1933, ‘the history of architecture started with the Soviet 1917 revolution.’ It wasn’t entirely a joke. For many designers in the Weimar Republic, and for subsequent generations of modernist hardliners, 1917 had made possible a reconstruction of life on collective, egalitarian and, above all, planned lines ...”

“... Whether by happy accident or design, the publication of Peter Jackson’s George Scharf’s London coincided with the opening of a notable exhibition at the Museum of London called simply ‘Londoners’. Although Scharf’s oeuvre is most readily classified as topographical art, his sketches are as descriptive of the everyday Londoners who went about their lawful pursuits in the decades between 1820 and 1850 as they are of sides of the emerging metropolis which down to that time were largely neglected by the best-known London iconographers ...”

“... 4 January. A Christmas letter from Cami Elbow, wife of Peter Elbow, an American college friend who teaches English at Amherst: Life in Amherst is very placid. Even grammatically correct. In December the town decided to encourage shoppers to patronise the downtown stores with free parking. They ordered plastic bags to cover up the parking meters but the bags arrived with the message wrongly punctuated: ‘Season’s Greeting’s ...”

“... exact art is that it matters whether the book ends, as it did then, with the exchange, ‘Hallo Peter.’ ‘Hallo Dad.’ or as it does now: ‘Hallo Peter.’ ‘Hallo dad.’ For the distinction wouldn’t footle. You would have to interpret ‘Hallo dad’ as a tellingly unique and utterly final act of tacit ...”

“... town called Ashcote – not on any real-life map – and not far from a grand house called Carlton Hall, which you won’t find in the handbooks of the National Trust or English Heritage because it isn’t on the map either. But even without any of this being spelled out you immediately imagine the set-up: lawns, tearoom, shop selling a variety of marmalades ...”

“... which correspond to a little less than half of the published text: 44 per cent, according to Peter Davison’s estimate. These have now been published in an opulent edition: the right-hand pages of the book give a full-size photograph of the material, the left-hand pages contain Professor Davison’s transcription, laboriously deciphered, the cancellings ...”

“... all that was left of the old neighbourhood was a chemical factory. One of his mates at school was Peter Hook, who ended up playing bass in the band; Hook likes to describe himself as an ‘oik’. Curtis was more bookish, and isolated. Joy Division’s music was bleak, full of frustration, fear and guilt. They were produced by Martin Hannett, whose studio ...”

“... the Greater London Council yielded its final fruit in the imminent availability of County Hall, it simultaneously presented the Government with a magnificent opportunity for resolving the LSE’s crisis. Naturally the opportunity was spurned, leaving market forces to keep this key site unoccupied. Instead of County ...”

“... a ‘romanticism of no possible belief’. With this phrase the story changes tack: the word ‘Peter’ is abstracted from Petersburg and becomes the name of a character to whom frenzied love letters are addressed (the high-low speech of these letters, their lurches of logic and cadence, make them terrifically and authentically mad, as anyone who has ...”

“... Till recently, I’ve dodged most of Peter Reading’s work. He seemed so much the darling of the TLS and of a metropolitan circle whose powerfully disseminated views it is often essential to evade in the interests of finding a position which affords a degree of independence. Seeing stray poems by him in magazines, I thought of him as having a gift of designer outrage, whose appeal to the sophisticated might be suspect ...”

“... novel, Tonkünstlers Leben, in which the composer-hero dreams himself transported to a concert hall, where a furious orchestral argument is taking place: All of a sudden the property man entered the hall, and all the instruments crept nervously back to their places, for they were aware that it was his rough hand that ...”

“... of Oxbridge voices reviewing an exhibition selected by and posthumously mounted as a tribute to Peter Fuller. The wannabe Oxbridge voice of Giles Auty, art bumbler for the Spectator, declares ‘Peter’ was led by his arguments rather than his eyes. Up speaks real Oxbridge voice, while duly patronising to Auty – not ...”

“... for a surrogate mother in every relationship,’ says Elizabeth Sweeting). His ‘marriage’ to Peter Pears, begun shortly after Mrs Britten’s death, may be partly understood in this light (Pears’s singing voice, it was noted, was uncannily similar to Mrs Britten’s), as may his lifelong willingness to be looked after, sometimes dominated, by a series ...”