“... like Nazi Germany (‘It was always very much an anti-mums and anti-dads thing,’ Siouxsie Sioux said of her penchant for swastikas), modern folk devils like the Moors murderers. In Derek Jarman’s punk film Jubilee (1978), Jordan – the SEX shopgirl who wore the clothes and projected the attitude, making her ‘the first Sex Pistol’, according to Jarman ...”

“... might have never happened. There is only one case that comes to mind, Ponting. What is to be said of him? ‘It was generally agreed that, rather than leaking or going public,’ Mount writes, ‘he should have taken his anxieties to his Permanent Secretary and rested content with the advice given him by that dignitary.’ Generally agreed? A pity about ...”

“... detail was as scanty as biographical was in Shakespeare’s’. Not many figures, it should be said, qualify for treatment at anything like this length. Harrison’s informative introduction to the dictionary tells us that the average length of entries is 1087 words. Since the tariff for even middle-ranking literary and intellectual figures (the areas ...”

“... the morning of the great day, was intriguing: ‘Father’s sister will be visiting,’ our mother said, ‘you won’t meet her, so there’s absolutely no reason for you to come out of your bedrooms.’ This was exciting, not because I was interested in suddenly possessing an aunt, but because the news suggested my father also had parents, a childhood, a ...”

“... about cohabitation and for bringing diasporic values back to that region. This was also no doubt Edward Said’s point when, in Freud and the Non-European, he called for the exilic histories of both Jews and Palestinians to serve as the basis for a new polity in Palestine.The Galut is thus not a fallen realm in need of redemption, even though it is ...”

“... that fell from above, through the panes ... was dirty and sad.’ ‘Only here,’ De Chirico said, ‘is it possible to paint. The streets have such gradations of grey.’ They were always ‘close’ (to recall a word that seemed to dominate my childhood), there was sure to be thunder by the end of the afternoon. Drizzle was their natural element. They ...”

“... have survived since at least the 15th century, a relic still of a ceremony that went out under Edward VI, is as vivid and evocative as any screen or wall-painting (though there are those too). Of course Puddletown figures in Hardy’s history and there are names on the war memorial – Sparks, for instance – of his cousins and relatives, the church ...”

“... workings of her intellectual circle, many of whose members were also her lovers: Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir, Reo Fortune, Gregory Bateson, Geoffrey Gorer. In retracing the exploits of this scholarly ménage à plusieurs, and in recovering their ideas alongside their passions, Mandler has captured a defining moment in the history of American ...”

“... since it does not represent. This is why science fiction, despite appearances, cannot be said simply to carry on the traditional narrative methods of ‘old-fashioned realism’, merely applying it to fantastic or at least non-realistic content. Rather, it enlists the visual literality of Einstein’s thought experiments to convey conceptions often ...”

“... problematic. With respect to the first, the hacking charges are unproved and may well remain so. Edward Snowden and others familiar with the NSA say that if long-distance hacking had taken place the agency would have monitored it and could detail its existence without compromising their secret sources and methods. In September, Snowden told Der Spiegel that ...”

“... in the collections – in one instance as a jumble of objects, seemingly neglected. It’s said that a former curator at the museum, Huguette Van Geluwe, left in tears when she saw the managed disarray. But Luntumbue and his collaborators were pitting the artefacts’ significance for the communities that had lost them against their interest for ...”

“... the shoulders – broad though they be – of the United States of America? The time had come, he said, for those questions to be answered. In his experience of large enterprises, Churchill had found it was ‘often a mistake to try to settle everything at once’. Just as he was opposed to the Conservative opposition entering into firm policy commitments ...”

“... bingo: ‘So what if Reader’s Digest says [cigarettes] are dangerous?’ Sal asks. ‘They also said Bambi was the book of the century. There’s no proof.’ It comes with this-day-in-history bingo: ‘He’s young, handsome and a navy hero,’ Roger tells Don. ‘Honestly, it shouldn’t be too difficult to convince America Dick Nixon is a ...”

“... interest is the section where Atlas gives a draft of the work in progress to the social scientist Edward Shils – a long-time colleague and frenemy of Bellow’s at the University of Chicago – to vet for errors, misemphases, solecisms and overall tone and conditioning, much as the critic Dwight Macdonald had served as the gruff, avuncular sounding board ...”

“... Liberal William Ewart Gladstone, who died while he was trying to solve the Irish Question, said of the First Opium War, which ended with Hong Kong under British rule: ‘a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know and have not read of.’ A comic classic, Foreign ...”