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“... bashing the naysaying reviewers as muckers, yahoos and ‘humpty-beaters’, strewing a rose petal path of compliments (‘a perfectly decent and honourable book very well written for much of its length’, ‘gifted with an agreeable variety of aperçus on matters such as status, class, privilege and clan’, ‘an interesting book, very ...”

“... seduced Emily Dickinson’s brother, Austin, 27 years her senior, and destroyed his marriage to Susan Gilbert, Emily’s closest confidante. Like any good seductress, Todd was an opportunist. She exploited Austin’s role as the treasurer of Amherst College to wangle her own husband, David, into powerful university positions and forced him to build her a ...”

“... of rain, or at the end of Lewis’s The Last Battle, with poor old Narnia dark and broken and Susan, with her disgusting lipstick and her nylons, shut out. Sex happens because it has to happen: there wouldn’t be much of a human race without it. And the existence of sex acts like a sentry – like Milton’s cherubim at the gates of Eden – preventing ...”

“... nightly in cinema queues? What, indeed? ‘Aren’t we going to be told who everyone is?’ said Susan, looking around the room and smiling. Effects like these have little in common with the ways of Swann or the beaches of Balbec; let alone celluloid derivatives. Lastly, and in many ways most significantly for reception at large, there is a difference of ...”

“... bearskins, plumed helmets. The kitsch of Greater Romania under Carol’s rule qualifies for what Susan Sontag called ‘failed seriousness’: one visiting journalist who was granted an interview with the king was astonished to encounter an aide-de-camp in full military rig, ‘a Hollywood ensemble of bright blue and red, golden braid and tassels, and ...”