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“... would it have been like to fall in love with the young Martin Amis, ‘the most fascinating man’ Gully Wells had ever met? ‘Only the most awful clichés,’ she tells us, ‘could possibly do justice to the way I felt.’ He was ‘very funny and very clever’; ‘he made me laugh and told me things I didn’t know.’ She is a bit more specific ...”

“... safety? The Admiralty packed its thousands into Bath and is only now pulling out. In Llandrindod Wells, as one well remembers, the Army erected notices warning officer cadets not to drink the water: the war was not going to be won by incontinent artillerists. Dr Phyllis Hembry re-creates in meticulous depth the heyday of the English spa, ending in the early ...”

“... of rotten eggs. Buxton was being developed and nursed by the Duke of Devonshire; Tunbridge Wells, having failed to cure barrenness in women, was stagnating; and the London spas, like Dulwich and Streatham, were already menaced by the capital’s slow suin. The coming of the railways had raised hopes that respectable health-seekers would pour into ...”

“... I was not asked to purchase another picture for the fund. Wilde became the inspiration for Gully Jimson, then vanished also. I am now struggling with the diary of a quite different character. This is Lord Hervey, a prominent figure from the Court of King George II. Hervey does not make an exciting writer. There are some curiosities in his record all ...”

“... geologist who has spent years studying the flow rates of springs in Wadi Zarqa. They walk up a gully and Macfarlane notes that ‘the stones of the wadi had been rinsed, turned and graded … so it was like walking a cobbled street.’ He picks up a lump of chert that ‘resembled a white eyeball wrapped in layers of brown linen’ and the geologist tells ...”

“... whom renown outran And the name died before the man. On 29 March my decree of divorce from Dee Wells, whom I had married in 1960, was made absolute on the basis of mutual agreement after two years’ separation, and on 5 April I married Vanessa Lawson at the Marylebone Registry Office. This is my third marriage, and one that belies the pessimism of Dr ...”