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“... The​ People’s Republic of China had its seventieth birthday on 1 October. ‘Sheng ri kuai le’ to the world’s biggest and most populous example of … of … well, actually, that sentence is hard to finish. There’s no off-the-shelf description for China’s political and economic system. ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is the Chinese Communist Party’s preferred term, but the s-word makes an odd fit with a country that is the world’s most important market for luxury goods, has the second largest number of billionaires, stages the world’s biggest one-day shopping event, ‘Singles’ Day’, and is home to the world’s biggest, fastest-expanding, spendiest, most materially aspirational middle class ...”

“... As the new governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, takes up his job, it’s a good moment to reflect on the nature and scale of the work ahead of him. In the rear-view mirror, he can see how our banks reached their current condition – a story full of failure, scandal, greed and incompetence. That, as far as the overall picture of modern Britain is concerned, is the fun part ...”

“... back out into space. The existence of the effect was first posited in 1859 by the Irish scientist John Tyndall, who said that without the greenhouse effect ‘the warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost’. The Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius added to ...”

“... When​ Iona woke up in the house she knew where she was straightaway, and she knew she was alone. There was none of that blurry intermediate state of semi-consciousness that people usually get when they’re in an unfamiliar place. Everything about the bed, the clean low modern furniture, the white painted walls, the angled light coming in through the edges of the blackout blinds – it was all crisp and distinct ...”

“... Some​ of the more pessimistic commentators at the time of the credit crunch, myself included, said that the aftermath of the crash would dominate our economic and political lives for at least ten years. What I wasn’t expecting – what I don’t think anyone was expecting – was that ten years would go by quite so fast. At the start of 2008, Gordon Brown was prime minister of the United Kingdom, George W ...”

“... At the end​ of June, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook had hit a new level: two billion monthly active users. That number, the company’s preferred ‘metric’ when measuring its own size, means two billion different people used Facebook in the preceding month. It is hard to grasp just how extraordinary that is. Bear in mind that thefacebook – its original name – was launched exclusively for Harvard students in 2004 ...”

“... It’s impossible​ to discuss new developments in money without thinking for a moment about what money is. The best place to start thinking about that is with money itself. Consider the UK’s most common paper money, the English five or ten or twenty quid note. On one side we have a famous dead person: Elizabeth Fry or Charles Darwin or Adam Smith, depending on whether it’s a five or ten or twenty ...”

“... It’s a moment of confusion and loathing that most of us have experienced. You’re in a shop. It’s time to pay. You reach for your purse or wallet and take out your last note. Something about it doesn’t feel quite right. It’s the wrong shape or the wrong colour and the design is odd too and the note just doesn’t seem right and … By now you’ve realised: oh shit! It’s the dreaded Scottish banknote! Tentatively, shyly – or briskly, brazenly, according to character – you proffer the note ...”

“... gossip. (I once passed on a piece of gossip which caused Karl to look up from his desk and say: ‘John, your ear is so close to the ground, it’s coming out in Australia.’ I didn’t mind the zinger, but thought Mary-Kay and Susannah had no need to laugh quite as much as they did.) He was particularly interested in the Spanner trial, in which a group of ...”