The Meyerowitz Stories and Maudie offer two portraits of an artist. I know which I’d rather hang on my wall

‘Come on our patch playing Greensleeves again and you’ll end up in a wafer,’ I was warned by an Italian ice-cream family in the 50s

Don’t tweet or email when you think the Queen isn’t looking, and in particular don’t tweet or email her

Jonas Kaufmann has asked me over the same evening Philip Roth wants a game of darts

An irritable queue would once have been the clue to a post office’s whereabouts, but queues are universal now

It’s natural to feel that a work of art you particularly love is yours, especially when enthusing about it to novices

Once I couldn’t sleep until I’d read 30 pages of a novel. Now I watch the news until late

There are few sights more cheering than crowds of readers tramping across a field carrying books

Jacob Rees-Mogg is not only, by self-definition, a democrat, he is also a mind-reader

And if two glasses are good, only imagine the benefits that accrue to me from five