“... milk, was obsessed with them; his Paris house, with its colony of strays, was known as ‘Cats’ Corner’). Smooth-contoured cats were discovered in Japanese watercolours, where the cat is an emblem of nobility, and their sculptural possibilities, as well as their gravitas, were further enhanced by the excavation of cat-deities in Egypt. Cats were suddenly ...”

“... impressively for his gear. CNN was here for some really significant story – the marriage of Sir Paul McCartney and anti-landmine campaigner Heather Mills, perhaps; a shade less probably, the wedding in St Eugene’s Cathedral, Londonderry, of Gráinne, daughter of Northern Ireland’s Education Minister Martin McGuinness (not yet knighted for his varied ...”

“... 11 per cent.For half a century we have been hearing that 1929 can never return, most recently from Paul Krugman of Princeton, who proposes the old Keynesian strategy for averting a world depression: cut interest rates, flood the markets with money, and if that fails, ensure that governments create demand. But Japan’s ‘lost decade’ has just seen the ...”

“... as a child with my grandmother in Rindge, New Hampshire, in the state’s rural south-western corner. I felt more or less, though not necessarily happily, at home in this crowd – as if it were a family gathering of my more aggressive cousins or a high school reunion to which only the former schoolyard bullies had been invited along with a few of their ...”

“... the present. The apocalyptic aspects of science, with the next breakthrough just around the corner, may add to the distortion by a more general undervaluation of the past. And the distortion is often sealed by an appeal to history for corroboration of fashionable stereotypes of scientific method, the classic discoveries having been made by ‘prepared ...”

“... still spattered with bullet holes from the civil war, the windows 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 ...”

“... elections approached, worried liberals were warning that an American theocracy was just around the corner. Then things started to unravel. When Americans went to the polls last November, both branches of Congress fell to the Democrats and the Republicans lost control of the House for the first time since Newt Gingrich’s triumph in 1994. Some of the religious ...”

“... to an invisible art manifestation: Lost Memories by Emma Matthews. ‘Very elegant, very Paul Klee,’ the punters say. Rusting English metal, from somewhere down the A13, near Rainham Marshes, rendered as a grid of delicately balanced reds and pinks, with just enough green to cancel the headache. This, so often, is how it works; synergy, they call ...”

“... but also about recent films such as Alien: Resurrection (‘inventive, honest and frank’) and Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (‘I’ve seen it twice and I like it a lot’).At some point I wrote a fan letter to David Thomson. In his reply, he urged me to develop interests other than film. That was Spielberg’s problem, Thomson said – he didn’t ...”

“... the early years of their marriage, was benign compared to the one she published ten years later: Paul Ivory, the playwright with whom Caroline Bell has a long and self-destructive affair in The Transit of Venus. Ivory is introduced as ‘a man of promise’, which should immediately alert us. Also, he wears espadrilles. Something is awry in this man for whom ...”

“... sexual intercourse, Stopesian contraceptive devices, cheap silken undergarments, pick-ups in Lyons Corner Houses. There is much worldly wisdom along the lines of: ‘All attractive girls should be seduced and married. They trouble a man less and listen to his conversation.’ Stained Radiance features three flatmate heroines and four heroes all linked by loose ...”

“... My own shares are down badly after that slip on the Channel Tunnel. She was not going to keep Paul (Channon) on. Bernard had the briefing to hand ... Bruce was dismissive about Tristan, ‘not up to it’; and Gow, ‘can’t get a grip on things’. I don’t like this. These are my friends, I mean my close friends. Then he made matters worse by saying ...”

“... opposition, it was this fear that drove a motley crew of deputies – including Bertrand Barère, Paul Barras, Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, Lazare Carnot and Jean-Lambert Tallien – to topple him. They did so by means of a hasty coup on 9 Thermidor, the day after his speech. The key events are well known. Robespierre’s ...”

“... election night​ , almost as soon as it was clear that the unthinkable had become a cold reality, Paul Krugman asked in the New York Times whether the US was now a failed state. Political scientists who normally study American democracy in splendid isolation are starting to turn their attention to Africa and Latin America. They want to know what happens when ...”

“... a local worthy who had applied for the post of stamp collector, hanging on a venerable elm at the corner of Essex and Orange Streets. In case anybody failed to get the message, the effigy had on its right sleeve the initials AO, and on its left a ditty: ‘What greater glory can New England see/Than stamp men hanging from a tree.’ That evening the Boston ...”