“... and a translator of Ibsen, was inspired to write the first major biography for 25 years by seeing John Barton’s Oslo production of Peer Gynt ‘and wondering why a man who could create a comic circus like that should choose to devote the rest of his life to writing a series of dark analyses of unhappiness’. The explanation he comes up with is ...”

“... two parties are neck and neck in a race in which – unlike in 2000 or 2004 – there is likely to be substantial crossover of support between the two main parties. No surprise, then, that the cycle of presidential and vice-presidential debates – starting on 26 September in Mississippi and ending on 15 October in New York – is being seen as the decisive ...”

“... on the sidewalk of a street in New York City. The attention of millions had been transfixed by a video that showed the fatal attempt to arrest Garner. Looking on wearily as he saw the police approach, Garner told a cop that he was doing nothing wrong, in fact he had just broken up a street fight (which was why the police were called). They were always ...”

“... or more precisely of the difference between two moments: the summer of 1915, when the novel by John Buchan on which it’s based began to appear in serial form, in the middle of one world war; and the summer of 1935, when the odds on the imminent outbreak of another were shortening by the day. The film takes from the ...”

“... Last July David Cameron announced a judicial inquiry into Britain’s alleged participation in acts of torture and rendition in the years since 9/11, though he also said that it wouldn’t begin until the current round of civil lawsuits had been resolved. The emphasis, he implied, would be on Britain’s role in condoning or assisting foreign agencies rather than on our own independent behaviour ...”

“... picture of it from a 1998 thriller called Enemy of the State. A lawyer (Will Smith), swept up by mistake into the system of total surveillance, suddenly finds his life turned upside down, his family watched and harassed, his livelihood taken from him and the records of his conduct altered and criminalised. He is saved ...”

“... major themes. In October 2012, the secretary of defence, Leon Panetta, raised the stakes further by declaring that the outcome of a concerted attack on key US systems and networks ‘could be a cyber Pearl Harbor’. Cyber-warfare was now assumed to pose a greater threat to national security than terrorism. In May ...”

“... There is some competition to be the person who inspired the slogan of Occupy Wall Street: ‘We are the 99 per cent.’ Joseph Stiglitz thinks it might be him, on the back of an article he wrote for Vanity Fair in 2011 entitled: ‘Of the 1 per cent, by the 1 per cent, for the 1 per cent ...”

“... the pitch. He reports Blair telling Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, back in 2007: ‘I learned by bitter experience during ten years as prime minister the problems of getting the government machine to deliver what I wanted. I created a Delivery Unit, and that was a great success. It transformed everything. I want to bring that success to Africa.’ Or as ...”

“... from Marber, Pinter, Osborne and Coward to Jonson and Shakespeare. And if you leave out the Irish (by birth or upbringing), you lose Congreve, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Wilde and Shaw. The source that gave London The Importance of Being Earnest and Arms and the Man a hundred years ago shows no signs of drying up: Irish writers, whether resident in England or ...”

“... the civic sphere are increasingly common in the United States, even among liberal democrats stung by accusations of secularist bias. The practical meaning of the separation of church and state has been contested since its enactment in the Bill of Rights. At what point does the First Amendment’s guarantee of the ‘free exercise’ of religion run foul of ...”

“... For fifty years he has been involving us in questions about cinema – what it is, what it might be, whether it matters. He has perplexed his admirers; several of his films are regarded by some as masterpieces and by others as misguided asides. Above all, he has insisted on beauty, and ...”

“... He described the refugees as people ‘who have vegetated on UN crumbs for five years, ignored by a world concerned elsewhere’, and wrote of ‘babies [who] sleep tight on their bellies to ease hunger pains’.Sparks had lots of readers. While he was never retained by the more prestigious outlets of the day – the New ...”

“... In its salad days, late last century, the first wave of social anthropologists, headed by Tylor and Frazer, sat firmly in armchairs, speculated grandly and wildly on the strength of second-hand reports from missionaries and travellers, and wrote for a lay readership in works of captivating prose. Then came Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, total immersion in single exotic cultures and increasingly unreadable monographs addressed to fellow-professionals ...”

“... does go on. The literary pages of the newspapers and more widely read journals are characterised by wall-to-wall reviewing. The review, consequently, is the most popular instrument we have for organising and distributing the production of ideas, for thinking about thinking (meta-discourse). The literary pages include essays, short stories and poems as well ...”