“... of this when working as a producer at Scottish Television (‘prompted by ever generous friends Russell Galbraith, Bob Cuddihy and Ken Vass’) and again in getting selected as parliamentary candidate for Dunfermline East (thanks to his ‘great friend Jim McIntyre’ and a group of young shop stewards from the Rosyth Dockyard, who ‘included Charlie ...”

“... limited effects on day-to-day existence. There was no breakdown of morale, and indeed, as Bertrand Russell noted, for many people the changes during wartime provided welcome relief from the routine of their ordinary lives. (The sombre figures in Henry Moore’s drawings do not reflect accurately the quality of life in air-raid shelters.) The economic ...”

“... Melbourne spent two winters in Glasgow, living plainly and studying with John Millar, disciple of David Hume and Adam Smith, and one of the most influential proselytisers for the Scottish Enlightenment. This experience gave him a strong commitment to the principles of political economy; it also profoundly influenced his thinking on the relationship between ...”

“... devilish, the incarnation of cruel despotism. No publicist was more prominent, or bizarre, than David Urquhart, the crackpot Scottish agitator who sat for some years in Parliament. He developed a passion for all things Turkish (including Turkish baths, which he introduced to London), denounced Russia in apocalyptic terms, and maintained that Palmerston was ...”

“... To understand Nicole Kidman, David Thomson argues, you need to see a film called In the Cut. Not because Kidman is in it. She isn’t. The film stars Meg Ryan, is directed by Jane Campion and tells the story of how a lonely creative writing teacher, Fran, becomes involved with a cop (Mark Ruffalo) who is investigating a string of particularly gruesome murders ...”

“... been made clear, still less where the money will come from to pay for the £7 billion in tax cuts David Cameron airily promised in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference last October. When such pledges are discussed in the media, it is usually in terms of whether they are funded or unfunded – whether the numbers ‘add up’. Osborne’s Autumn ...”

“... this time stole the surname of a classmate – formed a two-tone band called the Executive with David Austin (who would become a lifelong collaborator) and Ridgeley’s brother Paul. Michael was lead vocalist but hadn’t yet found the right style: his attempts at a Jamaican accent fell flat. A fifth member, Andrew Leaver, directed homophobic slurs at James ...”

“... 1972 winner, John Berger, in denouncing capitalism and Booker’s treatment of Guyanese workers. David Lean optioned the novel a year later, and though the project came to nothing, Farrell found himself in funds for the first time in his life. After finishing The Singapore Grip in his two-room flat in South Kensington, he bought a cottage on the coast of ...”

“... is the most interesting, however, and here Tempest more or less follows the philosopher David Sedley’s argument in his essay ‘The Ethics of Brutus and Cassius’ (1997), which demolishes ‘the belief, endemic among historians of the period, that, whatever his formal affiliations may have been, Brutus was in spirit, like so many Romans, a ...”

“... Militant Modernism by Owen Hatherley, One-Dimensional Woman by Nina Power and The Meaning of David Cameron by Richard Seymour, all of which grew from their authors’ blogposts. Such works amounted to ‘a kernel of a whole new left public’, according to another of Fisher’s friends, Jeremy Gilbert, professor of cultural studies at the University of ...”

“... religion, or at least venerable, immutable, perfect, distant. Principles of justice, for example. David Hume enters, not for the first time, as an ally here. ‘The sense of justice and injustice is not derived from nature,’ he argued, ‘but arises artificially, though necessarily, from education and human inventions.’ People resent this. It is all right ...”

“... in Axler’s proposed salvation-by-child, or by love or sex (‘He who forms a tie is lost’ – David Kepesh’s friend George O’Hearn, telling it straight in The Dying Animal). They won’t save him, and nor will solitude: it’s the absence of ties which has brought him to this pass. Axler has no family: no memories of dear Morty Sabbath to stay his ...”

“... offer examples of Prince’s borrowings from the Criterion, but viewed from this angle the Pope of Russell Square himself comes to resemble the all-powerful patron whom the aspirant artist is skilfully wooing by ingesting and recasting his doctrines and preferred idioms. Memoirs in Oxford is also frank – too frank for Hill, who complains that the poem is ...”

“... than his love of laughter, his delight in the world? Did his prose style, as the novelist Russell Banks claimed that evening, take its bearings from Emerson, or was it, as the writer Hilton Als put it, ‘a high-faggot style’, or did it originate, as John Edgar Wideman claimed, from a mixture of the King James Bible and African American speech? Was ...”

“... a political leader giving the audience a history lesson. In 1967 I went to North Vietnam for the Russell/Sartre war crimes tribunal. That experience seared me for life. Later I joined a team sent by Bertrand Russell to attend Régis Debray’s trial in Camiri as part of an effort to save his life. All this left a mark. But ...”