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“... died. British Generals in Blair’s Wars kicks off with a vigorous attack on Tony Blair by Jonathan Bailey, who retired from the army as head of doctrine in 2005.2 But towards the end of the book, as the commanders who served in Afghanistan get their say, the dominant tone is of anger towards the Ministry of Defence and the army itself, which ...”

“... Jonathan Lethem’s first novel is set at an indeterminate time in the not too distant future. The United States – and possibly the whole world – is now run by the Inquisition, also known as the Office. You need a licence to ask questions. Everyone has to carry a card which registers how much ‘karma’ they have: the level can be increased or reduced at the discretion of an Office inquisitor – once it drops below zero, you’re taken off to the deep freeze ...”

“... he sends a postcard of shitting camels with the message ‘Thinking of you here,’ and a joke of Jonathan Raban’s about a Burgess fiction brings the comment: ‘This is what British criticism has descended to.’ Geoffrey Grigson’s dislike of his ‘coarse and unattractive personality’ is mentioned, repeated, finally repaid by a feeble satirical ...”

“... generation that did National Service, just too young to have fought in the Second World War. David Bailey once said that ‘Swinging London’ was ‘just national servicemen gone demob happy’. They were radical materialists who believed exclusively in what they could see and what their imaginations delivered them. Transcendence was not on the ...”

“... When Jonathan Lethem was born, in 1964, his mother had dropped out of college and was piercing ears with a pin and ice-cube in Greenwich Village, where she ran with a crowd of folksingers including Tuli Kupferberg, Dave Van Ronk and Phil Ochs. His father, in an early phase of his career as an artist, was painting basketball hoops, vices and stereopticons ...”

“... head and our country repeopled with foreigners’. He did not miss a trick in turning himself, as Jonathan Israel once put it, into an object of ‘national detestation’. The only comfort he could offer his subjects was the exhilaration of war. Within a few days of the coronation, the English fleet engaged the French off the coast of Ireland, and at the end ...”

“... emerged from our hobbit holes and combed the cobwebs from our hair: the starship arrival of Blake Bailey’s authorised biography of Philip Roth, Philip Roth: The Biography. The ‘the’ of the subtitle said: accept no substitutes. Another biography of Roth was in the offing, Ira Nadel’s Philip Roth: A Counterlife, a sizeable, solidly ...”

“... crime committed in the City of London (not the metropolis as a whole) which came before the Old Bailey sessions during the course of almost a century. The result is no narrow study of court procedures and verdicts, but a comprehensive account of crime and punishment at every stage, explaining how defendants ended up at the Old ...”

“... life run side by side, barely touching for most of the book. Scenes with the afflicted husband, Bailey, are separated from the office narrative, reflecting the absolute division between work and private life. In the chapters dealing with Alzheimer’s, Jennings uses a more heightened language: her husband ‘would erode like a sandstone statue’, leaving ...”

“... do wisely … when in a Crowd, to amuse the Mob by Quarrels,’ Henry Fielding’s master-criminal Jonathan Wild advises his gang, ‘that while they are listening to your Jargon, you may with the greater Ease and Safety, pick their Pockets.’ In The Beggar’s Opera (1728), Peachum, a thief-catcher, surveys with Lockit the jail-keeper their cache of stolen ...”

“... crop up in both jestbooks and trial reports. In 1772 an anthology called The Humours of the Old Bailey; or, Justice Shaking Her Sides – a single copy survives in the Guildhall Library – lifted its material from the Old Bailey Sessions Papers, with no changes needed to indicate the comedy. Then there are the rape ...”

“... them Howe, Crichlow, Altheia Jones-LeCointe and Barbara Beese – were brought to trial at the Old Bailey, charged with ‘incitement to riot and affray’. Howe chose to defend himself from the dock, and made his case to great effect. On 16 December 1971, after 55 days of argument, the judge – concluding that there was ‘evidence of racial hatred on both ...”

“... in prints of exquisite quality taken with large-format cameras. Examples in How We Are include Jonathan Olley’s photograph of an oil storage depot and caravan site on Canvey Island from his book Sea Walls, and one of a scrap of fatty meat from Keith Arnatt’s Pictures from a Rubbish Tip. The get-it-all-in banality of crime-scene photographs is another ...”

“... of war and friendly with the Nicholsons.28 March, Palm Sunday. Remember this a propos a joke of Jonathan Miller’s, who, seeing a woman coming back from church holding a cross made of reeds said that it was literally the last straw.1 April. There is currently a row going on about late night raves on Primrose Hill where, lacking toilet facilities on the ...”

“... Mosleyite mob-orator, had returned to the Galway of his youth. His trial for treason at the Old Bailey was a sensation. Crowds gathered outside, desperate to catch a glimpse of their would-be destroyer. In 1940, two-thirds of the population had tuned in at least occasionally to hear Lord Haw-Haw gloat when British ships were sunk and pronounce the ...”