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“... turns, the mine at one point invaded by droves of Proust-lovers, headed by the scantily-clad Beryl Jarvis. Why the name Beryl Jarvis should be funny I can’t think. But it was and plainly is. In those days Peter could tap a flow of mad verbal inventiveness that nothing could stem: not nerves, not drink, not ...”

“... Some of us​ are trapped all our lives. This is the lesson of Beryl Bainbridge’s novel Injury Time, first published in 1977. It is a sort of dinner party farce, except better. The aptly named Edward Freeman asks his friend Simpson and Simpson’s wife, Muriel, to spend the evening with him and his mistress, Binny, at Binny’s house ...”

“... many taken in gratitude for assistance in moving his van. (Fenton was the inspiration for Beryl Bainbridge’s novel Master Georgie, but he has most in common with Pierre at the Battle of Borodino. Though a civilian, he was well-born and, armed with letters of introduction from Prince Albert, empowered to move between camps, socialising with officers ...”

“... entering it each morning: ‘My name is Mrs Effie Dowdy and it always was and it always will be. I cook, I bake, I wash, I poss, I mangle, I iron, I brush, I stoke, I scrub, I mend, I patch and I peel. The last I do for the convenience of Mr Dowdy, a penetrating man.’ She admitted to knowing nowt of the bonds of mother-love – or as some writer-bloke in the ...”

“... and a checked woollen scarf. She does errands for people and is at their beck and call. Here lives Beryl, Maggie’s daughter, my heroine: a schoolgirl, dimpled and saucy. There is only one doll for which I ever care, and that one, in tribute to her, is called Beryl. She is a doll made of grubby green satin, with satin ...”

“... If Beryl Bainbridge​ had published, as her last novel, a satirical farce about the machinations behind a famous literary prize, she might have managed to weather the accusations of pique. Better yet if she had held it back for posthumous publication, to show that she could wait out her own ego. Anyone else is likely to be seen as settling a score rather than diagnosing the ills of the literary marketplace ...”

“... pertinent now that we know more about the private agonies or blankness of performers like Cook, Sellers and Milligan. Not to mention Martin himself: for all that he presented himself like a character out of Waugh’s Sword of Honour, this was not his class inheritance but a persona carefully pieced together over the years, as if on a multi-track ...”