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“... Island was his home. As a schoolboy of 16 in 1951 he was there with a visiting ornithologist, Robert Murphy, and Louis Mowbray, the director of the aquarium, when the extraordinary discovery was made of a surviving cahow on a tiny outcrop not far from Nonsuch Island, three centuries after it was thought to have become extinct. When he had completed ...”

“... the cognoscenti like a confederation of secret masters: Gerald Kersh, James Curtis, Mark Benney, Robert Westerby, Alexander Baron, John Lodwick, Jack Trevor Story. They have been struck from the canon, these technicians, these life-enhanced witnesses. They are noticed only by slumming journalists (who have built up their own collections of the stuff) or by ...”

“... resounded with more anti-English ardour than Surcouf, a submarine launched in 1929 and named after Robert Surcouf, le roi des corsairs, who in his long career seized more than 40 English ships. In 1940, the first shots in what Colin Smith calls ‘England’s last war against France’ were exchanged between the two navies. Before the armistice of 22 June, de ...”

“... and the Gold Coast. Cyprus is a running sore . . .’ This was the real difference with Eden. Robert Murphy, the US Deputy Secretary of State, visited Eden just a fortnight after Macmillan wrote those words. He noted with wonder that Eden ‘was labouring under the impression that a common identity of interests existed among the allies. The Prime ...”

“... to reinforce the reputation of ‘the Palladium of public credit’. It is at this point that Anne Murphy takes her bird’s eye view of a day in the life of the bank. In her acknowledgments she expresses some apprehension about having plumped for this approach, but she need not have worried. This is a model of economic history, acute, profound and ...”

“... mock pomposity in Joseph Andrews. In a work published just days after the fall from office of Sir Robert Walpole – ‘prime minister’ in a sense that had no constitutional legitimacy at the time, and implied an alarming concentration of power – there was nothing innocent about the joke. Walpole’s self-promotion was a standard target, but Fielding’s ...”

“... experience, have learned something that you could bring to bear on a book about Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell and the media in the contemporary world. From your unique insight into tabloid sex scandals, you must, for instance, have noticed among last year’s crop at least two that stood out for their quintessentially Post-Modern character. One was the ...”

“... notably the poet Saint-John Perse, talked down De Gaulle; Washington’s envoy to Vichy, Robert Murphy, briefed hard against him; but perhaps the president drew his own conclusions from the disastrous Anglo-French assault on Dakar in the autumn of 1940, undertaken at De Gaulle’s urging. Almost certainly, after the Spanish Civil War, he seemed ...”

“... in presenting the case. But the main issue seems to be her hair. (The series producer, Ryan Murphy, is the magician who brought us the hard-hitting high-school documentary series, Glee.) The onscreen Clark comes to be fully known in episode five, when, regardless of what actually happened to her real-world equivalent, she comes home exhausted on a ...”

“... It is noteworthy that Monica Baldwin nowhere figures in this book. What does figure is Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart’s diary, 1915-1938, which is used as a major authority. Bruce Lockhart was a delightful man and, in certain fields, an interesting writer. As a social historian he is nowhere. He was a social climber who, like many such, had but scanty ...”

“... accomplished work. And then, in 1991, there was American Psycho. I’m having drinks with Charles Murphy at Rusty’s to fortify myself before making an appearance at Evelyn’s Christmas party. I’m wearing a four-button double-breasted wool and silk suit, a cotton shirt with button-down collar by Valentino Couture, a patterned silk tie by Armani and ...”

“... Post Office and measure the height of the ground to Cúchulainn’s arse’, as Neary in his novel Murphy wished to engage with the arse of the statue of Cúchulainn, the ancient Irish hero, patron saint of pure ignorance and crass violence, by banging his head against it. The need to buy a stamp or a TV licence or fill in a form is often too pressing, the ...”

“... than one generation of British film-makers, and what he did for the stage – Beckett, Pinter, Tom Murphy, Terence Rattigan – has changed the game for several more to come. You might say the drama in Karel Reisz’s life existed at quite a deep level, but it also existed in his conversation. At tables, in cars, in foyers, on the phone, Karel Reisz and his ...”

“... Earldom (sic) was conferred on this man’s father, though he used it as a courtesy title. Arthur Murphy is transmogrified into ‘Arthur Murray’, whilst Ms Lesley Lewis becomes Mr Leslie Lewis. Theodore Besterman is converted to ‘Rasherman’, a mistranscription one would find implausible if Shakespearian textual scholars imputed it to a hasty ...”

“... he had taken the plummiest diplomatic posting conceivable, becoming an assistant to his uncle, Robert Cecil, at the Paris Peace Conference. Thereafter Cranborne pursued a career in the City. He was quite hopeless but, of course, became the director of a bank. Lyttelton, on the other hand, showed great business acumen and rose rapidly on his merits. Both ...”