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“... One may ask of Ms Ford’s book, rather as Alice asks of the White Knight’s poem: ‘What is it called?’ The title on the jacket is ‘Men’; the title on the title-page is Men. The jacket is the part of a book where publishers most candidly make known their views. Publishing contracts specifically reserve to the publisher the right to determine its appearance, unilaterally if necessary ...”

“... awakening of Henry Root. In the course of his researches for Root on Women – ‘to balance Anna Ford on men’ – the barnstorming litterateur discovers the vice anglais. Talk about flogging a dead horse. From then on, it’s bondage all the way for the captive reviewer, with exchanges of this kind: ‘The upper classes, you say? Etonians? The ...”

“... Warm and vibrant. We lunched together a few times but, alas, remained only good friends’ – to Anna Ford (‘I had the feeling that her first love was men and work came second’), and ‘my friend and discovery Selina – gorgeous, delicious Selina Scott’. The old boy seems always to have been unduly fascinated by sexual speculation. He finds it ...”

“... are normal people, were questions that came up all the time in the film-making career of John Ford, a career that lasted fifty years, and which one way or another says as much about home and landscape, belonging and solitude, war and peace, history and memory, America and Europe, as that of any American storyteller in any medium. ...”

“... absence of naturalised Arabs from all the party lists, one wonders how these French variants on Anna Ford and Selena Scott manage to look so pertly relevant while posing such ludicrous questions.) Even ‘liberals’ such as ex-President Giscard make ponderous remarks about immigrants having to ‘remember that they may have rights, but they have ...”

“... example of Mdlle Rossignol for Florence Nightingale, Hingley boldly translates the untranslatable. Anna Sergeyevna is deprived of her atmospheric and irreplaceable patronymic and becomes ‘Anne’. In Garnett, Anna Sergeyevna isn’t sure ‘whether her husband has a post in a Crown Department or under the Provincial ...”

“... in 1948. Gordon had impeccable literary credentials. As a young writer, she had been mentored by Ford Madox Ford, who had her read an early draft of her first novel, Penhally, out loud to him. She was edited by Maxwell Perkins, and had published eight novels and one short story collection. O’Connor was familiar with ...”

“... desiccated schoolmaster, more interested in literature than life. His lecture to a local group on Anna Karenina is followed by a discussion in which Anna’s conduct is criticised: ‘What had she done, Charles wondered, to arouse dislike in these liberated women?’ His fastidiousness about the introduction of his ...”

“... aware of the new techniques, new styles of ‘treatment’, currently being explored by Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, and aware also of the new rules of the game as promulgated by Henry James with his passion for ‘doing’. Bennett greatly admired Conrad, but decided against this kind of ‘doing’. The Old Wives’ Tale ...”

“... of individuals essential to the music they make. These talkers do not much converse, and soon Ford Madox Ford was to break the news that modern art should show how in conversations the speakers do not listen to one another. Of the art of Ford’s friend and collaborator, Conrad, Ian ...”

“... good stories. Jamesie likes to tell the one about his brother Johnny, who went to England after Anna Mulvey, the girl he loved. Johnny is a mythical figure: ‘the best shot this part of the country has ever seen’, ‘the whole world at his feet’. He’s Synge’s Playboy – and, appropriately, he once played the Playboy – lord of everywhere, or so ...”

“... for their private collections. Compared with their modern counterparts, scholars funded by Mellon, Ford, Guggenheim and the British Academy, the Dilettanti had a striking characteristic: they were not so much specialists as universalists. By the time Knight joined it, the Society was absorbing the fruits, not only of archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and ...”

“... Was Selznick wary of greater challenges – Bleak House or Huckleberry Finn? When he tackled Anna Karenina, also in 1935, he turned it into a glossy vehicle for Garbo; and his very last film, A Farewell to Arms, was an over-reverent flop. The best picture he produced, Carol Reed’s The Third Man, was the one in which he interfered the least – although ...”

“... down. His attack on rhyming translatorese includes a telling examination of a stanza from ‘To Anna Kern’ as rendered by Kisch, Newmarch, T.B. Shaw and Bowra. His own version has no difficulty in achieving a more tactful, as well as more literal, fidelity: I remember the moment of wonder: You appeared before me, Like a momentary vision, A spirit of pure ...”

“... it for you with my Dunhill.’ ‘May I have this dance, Lady Darlene? I am the Earl of Grant ford.’ ‘Indeed you may, Earl, honey. I am Lady Darlene.’ There are even touches of Gracie (or is it Woody?) Allen:   ‘Was your father weak, passive, absent from home a lot?’   ‘You mean before he died?’ There is also a glum, constant sense ...”