“... missing their glass. Around the corner on the buzzy rue Hamra the bars and shops blazed with light and music, but rue Kantari, site of one of the most famous acts of the Cold War, was dark. On the night of 23 January 1963, during a fierce rainstorm, Philby walked down the five flights of stairs from the flat he shared with Eleanor Brewer, the former wife ...”

“... this Bitch burn at my deliverance in the furnace of my joyful cremation. We were fortunate that Donald Davie, setting up an English Department at the University of Essex in 1965, invited Dorn to cross the Atlantic as a Fulbright lecturer. This was a pivotal episode for Dorn and for the mass of younger English poets who had heard rumours of Black Mountain ...”

“... him on the head when the police arrived. Pelosi suffered a fractured skull, but Republicans made light of the assault, with some insinuating that DePape was a gay escort. Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, said, with mock solemnity, ‘There’s no room for violence anywhere,’ then added: ‘But we’re going to send her back to be with him in ...”

“... he wrote the same day in a note to Duras, whom he didn’t know. Two days later, he was telling Donald McWhinnie at the BBC, which had just broadcast his first radio play, All That Fall, that Le Square was ‘overwhelmingly moving – to me’, and, he imagined, ‘ideal’ for the Third Programme. McWhinnie agreed and passed the material on to Barbara ...”

“... a ‘feudal libido’, can we recapture the dreams that troubled the original Charlemagne (a light sleeper, as it happens)? Already in the Early Medieval period people were in the business of making images for themselves and investing belief in them. Thus the learning of the Saxon historian Widukind inclined him to think that the Saxons were descended ...”

“... and historically important point – that the Reagan phenomenon can only be understood in the light of the post-war decline of the old Wasp ruling class, and the shift in power and wealth from the declining industrial East Coast of America to the booming silicon-chip West Coast – is never acknowledged. This lack of a political, social and above all ...”

“... suggest may have been Blunt’s recruiter and Soviet control. When the Times claimed to unmask Donald Beves of King’s as a probable Soviet recruiter in 1977 (an allegation which it later withdrew), many Cambridge observers believed that the phantom molehunt had reached its satirical limit. Gow, however, is a name which out-Beveses Beves in sheer ...”

“... words like ‘text’ and ‘discourse’, but on close examination this proves to be more of a light peppering than a full attack of the plague. Underneath, she is still a tough-minded writer, and this book springs from a real, as opposed to a big, idea. The idea is that the famous Sydney weekly magazine the Bulletin was, in the twenty or so years leading ...”

“... extended household, charmed into telling their stories to a man who listened eagerly in the half-light, gave them straight forward advice, and was clearly in no position to be moralistic or condescending about anyone else’s confessed behaviour, however bizarre. Pubescent girls and young women particularly appealed to him. He took a shine to Alma Bush, for ...”

“... of Richard Serra, the lavish performances, films and installations of Matthew Barney, or the light-and-space extravaganzas of Olafur Eliasson. As a result, however international the clientele of high-end art might be, it remains highly exclusive: a tight system of grand patronage has returned, with the most coveted work often bespoken before it is ...”

“... in all their glory – just check out the promotional shots of them flying into the sunset – Donald Trump, then still president-elect, tweeted: ‘The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.’ Lockheed Martin’s shares immediately dropped 4 per cent. Trump ...”

“... Heidegger an anti-Semite? But: would Germany’s greatest 20th-century philosopher have endorsed Donald Trump? The first two questions have, after all, already been answered satisfactorily. Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933, at a time when few other German philosophers had done so, and as rector of the University of Freiburg in 1933-34 actively sought ...”

“... Both The Graphic Language of Neville Brody and The Making of the ‘Independent’ cast light on the relationship between writing and the medium of print. The magazines Brody has designed and the Independent are at opposite ends of the spectrum of style, but in both cases graphic design allows scanning (as against reading), and allows those buyers ...”

“... important, a cheerful, wily, lovable mouse known as ‘Bruder Mouse’. Any resemblance to Goofy, Donald and Mickey is no doubt intentional. The image of Bruder Mouse comes to dominate the book, becoming emblematic of everything that is most sinister and at the same time most irresistible about Voorstand. Tristan’s mother, a Voorstander by birth, loathes ...”

“... or learn to use a ‘system of analytical reviews’ to assess his ‘behaviours’ in the light of the documented ‘social contract’. He is constantly being told that it is ‘an exciting time’ to be with the company, and bombarded with slogans: ‘To be a trustee is to be a forward thinker.’ Louse is a fairly short first novel and these shifts ...”