1. Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

    Most of this famous book was written in Lausanne. Basil was one of the less anonymous of the Byzantine Emperors, and Manuel his most valued general.

  2. Werner Heisenberg, Philosophie und Quantummechanik.

    A few miscellaneous essays and thoughts by Heisenberg: this particular one, rather more lively than the rest, took place somewhere in Huntingdonshire on August 8th, 1945. Heisenberg and his fellow-detainees are trying to envisage the post-war and now post-nuclear world. Some scepticism is in order.

  3. U.A. Fanthorpe, St George.

    Entertaining poem by one of the candidates to succeed Ted Hughes.

  4. Evelyn Waugh, Officers and Gentlemen.

    Or possibly Men at Arms, which would make a mess of the clue.

  5. Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange.

    Not exactly a typical passage but quite important: this is the very end of the book.

  6. Byron, Lara.

    In this rightly obscure poem, Byron (who played for Harrow against Eton, club foot and all), tell the story of an absent hero, Lara, who turns up at London Airport demanding more pay and when given it leads his troops to a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Africans. Or something like that.

  7. William Hazlitt, On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority.

    Which the Philistine/Liberace Organisation are well aware of.

  8. Giorgio Vasari, Vite degli artisti.

    This practical joker is no less than Leonardo da Vinci.

  9. Derek Walcott, Omeros.

    Another candidate to succeed Ted Hughes.

  10. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko.

    The first woman, in Britain at least, to make her living as a writer, also on the subject of slavery.

  11. Longfellow, irrelevant title which I've forgotten.

    The hexameters are distinctive. I have not the faintest idea what the passage means.

  12. Denis Diderot, Jacques le fataliste et son maître.

    Just in case you thought it was a modern device for the writer to address the reader directly.