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“... We live in interesting times, alas. The new world order isn’t bringing much order to the world. What used to be called ‘actually existing socialism’ is no longer existing in most places, and while capitalism is existing it isn’t doing much better for most people. The warfare state and the welfare state (right or left) are both falling under their own weight, as the economy (market or command) fails to supply their rising demands ...”

“... it. Patience, precision, quiet. But the tone of The Last English Poachers, written by Bob, his son Brian (also a poacher) and a ghost called John McDonald, is more punk than its predecessors’. The Robin Hood aspect is to the fore. The Toveys see themselves as the rural frontline in the class war, and their book is full of contempt for rural toffs, or ...”

“... to pinch a ladder from a shed, sneak up the back of the house and enter through a skylight? In Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible, Tom Cruise steals a computer disc from the CIA’s Langley HQ while suspended from a cable attached to the belt of a co-thief hidden in a ventilation shaft in the ceiling. The scene that didn’t make it into the movie, but ...”

“... than any other literary discovery, short of a new play by Shakespeare, that one can imagine.’ Brian Southam begins his Introduction to ‘Grandison’ by quoting the apparently prophetic observation of Margaret Drabble in 1974. Ever since she said it, there has been a run of near misses or all-buts, beginning with Another Lady’s completion of Jane ...”

“... Two officers from Winson Green Prison at the time the men were admitted, Peter Bourne and Brian Sharp, gave evidence that the men were marked with injuries when they first came to the prison. The judges said that Peter Bourne was just trying to cover up for the fact that the men were beaten up in the prison. Of ...”

“... Isherwood returned the tepid compliment, 12 years later, with a script for the Tony Richardson production of The Loved One. The movie regularly makes the lists of alltime turkeys. Would that my enemy had written a book and I might adapt it for the screen. The stock of the various members of the Auden Gang has fluctuated over the decades, and ...”

“... after similar misgivings. When he went underground, Mandela asked a distant relative, 26-year-old Brian Somana, ‘to be Winnie’s infrastructure’ in his absence. By August 1962, when Mandela was arrested, Somana had become her lover. By the time Mandela declared in front of the South African Supreme Court in April 1964 that ‘if needs be’ a democratic ...”

“... but everyone in Britain gets a corporate-box view of the weather. ‘In the past few years,’ Brian Cathcart writes on page two, ‘I have watched a lot of rain through my big window.’ As beginnings of British books about Britain go, this is unpromising. The only more daunting marker of intent would be: ‘In the past few years, I have watched a lot of ...”

“... agents belong behind bars. The trouble is that no one much cares: Nottingham Forest still has its Brian Clough Stand, while George Graham and Terry Venables remain in demand despite accusations of corruption. Modern soccer is summed up not by the idea of ‘the beautiful game’ but by a remark of Tommy Docherty’s: Lots of times managers have to be cheats ...”

“... not in the same order: a proggy occult phase, a glam phase, a Bryan Ferryish lounge pop phase, a Brian Enoish ambient phase, a David Bowieish decadent nightclub phase; Bonjour, Biqui, Bonjour! was his punk phase. Debussy and Ravel (not to mention Poulenc, Fauré, Milhaud and others) may have written grander pieces. But while they were busy with concertos and ...”

“... and (Wells again) The History of Mr Polly; perhaps the Antipodean outsider Henry Handel Richardson would have scooped it with The Getting of Wisdom. In 1924 Forster’s publishers might have thought they had a chance with his block-buster, A Passage to India. For once, Wells wasn’t dogging him: but there was Maurice Baring’s C, Ford’s Some do ...”

“... example involves the British anthology The Terrible Rain: The War Poets 1939-45, edited by Brian Gardner and published in 1966; not only did it exclude Gaelic work, but its sole mention of Sorley MacLean (who lived until 1996) occurs when Gardner lists him among poets killed in action during the Second World War. As the end of the 20th century brought ...”

“... the implications. For almost fifteen years Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong and Carole Richardson had insisted they were innocent and had been framed by the police. I recalled that Sir Michael Havers, who led for the Crown in the 1975 trial, had reasoned to the jury that if the Four were innocent, a huge conspiracy to pervert the course of justice ...”

“... and amenable if they are to interest him. He had spent a happy two hours with the 19-year-old Brian Remnant, who had come up to King’s for an interview, but wonders if he will remain in his life two years on. ‘I may meet him again – coarsened, begirled, and lost.’ A famous 79-year-old gay novelist living in a college with several hundred young men ...”

“... aristo to his friends in the pop music world, but his nobbier chums looked down on him a bit. John Richardson says: One of the odd things about Robert was that he always dressed up. The rest of us were in blue jeans and leather jackets and up to no good in the Village, but Robert always had an impeccable blazer, very Old Etonian, consciously so. I suspect he ...”