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“... universal contempt. Denis Healey says: ‘He was a terrible prime minister, actually.’ Gavyn Davies, then a Downing Street adviser, remembers him as bored and ‘slightly an absentee prime minister’. Drink got him through the day: ‘Brandy from midday till late evening, when he is slow and very slurred,’ according to the diary of Bernard ...”

“... There were already good biographies of Shaw, notably those of Frank Harris and Hesketh Pearson, both of whom knew Shaw and had the benefit of his energetic interventions. Pearson in particular will not be easily supplanted. Nevertheless the archives of the world are full of Shaviana inaccessible before his death, and because there had not been a serious attempt since 1956 – the centenary year – the Shaw Estate sensibly decided that the time had come for a new biography, and invited Mr Holroyd to write it ...”

“... an increasing homogeneity of casting (the ‘anything with Tara Fitzgerald’ syndrome). Andrew Davies withdrew his adaptation of Angela Lambert’s A Rather English Marriage from the BBC when Alan Yentob insisted that an aristocratic ex-Battle of Britain pilot be played by David Jason; ITV loved it, but made similar demands. Eventually, back at the ...”