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“... man who had no understanding or respect for the responsibilities of scholarship’. To Dan Laurence, bibliography is something other. Where Shaw had observed only a harmless drudge, Mr Laurence sees ‘an exacting science’, a work that may be ‘treated artfully’, and the culmination (like an elevation ...”

“... all Shaw’s writings on music. The hero of this enterprise is that doyen of Shaw scholars, Dan Laurence. Unlike the seven volumes of plays (for which Mr Laurence acted only as editorial supervisor), Shaw’s Music carries the imprimatur of the full Laurence editorship that ...”

“... has, for Shaw, an extra application. In his Collected Letters 1911-1925, very finely edited by Dan Laurence, Shaw is quite explicit, and most illuminating, about a curious principle which is exhibited in his plays and also has much bearing on his life. ‘All the characters in all my plays,’ he writes to the producer Augustin Hamon (5 November ...”

“... a well-known letter, used by Frank Harris in his biography and now given in its original form by Dan Laurence, Shaw claims to have no scruples in matters of sex, but at once goes on to admit he has two: he will take care not to get women into trouble, and he will refrain from cuckolding his friends. Here as elsewhere – in money matters, for instance ...”

“... Suffocated’ – and its effect on their 16-year-old daughter Sophy, and on their neighbours, Laurence and Hilary. The families are close. Gina and Laurence are old school friends; each represents ‘the person I talk to about what we want out of life, borrow books from, go to the cinema with’. It is quickly ...”

“... for a ‘rational motive’. Critiques of deterrence feature prominently in other recent books. Laurence Martin argues in his Reith Lectures that the theory of deterrence based on ‘mutual assured destruction’ has ‘serious and probably fatal flaws’. He goes on, however, to endorse a refined version of nuclear deterrence which emphasises ...”

“... rather than Adam Low’s enlightening 1998 Arena, a pedestrian 1983 ‘biographical film’ by Laurence Rees, which at £26.99 is not only not worth the price of admission, but not worth the bother of removing the cellophane. There have been a number of explanations as to why Dad’s second renaissance feels more like a restoration. The first is that the ...”

“... reaction was: ‘Oh no, not the ironing-board.’ He went on to write The Entertainer (in which Laurence Olivier played the lead), Luther (played by Albert Finney), Inadmissible Evidence (with Nicol Williamson) and A Patriot for Me (which, along with Edward Bond’s later Saved, can be credited with having brought about the end of theatre ...”

“... claimed to be ill. ‘I’m going to be the youngest person ever to die,’ he’d once said to Dan Jacobson when he wasn’t feeling well. He was then around thirty. Almost three decades later, he was still talking in a similar vein. Even feeling especially healthy could be a bad sign. ‘I’m feeling unusually well at the moment,’ he once told me, on ...”