“... was not just a negative condition of the unfolding of this crisis; it was an active catalyst. As Susan Woodward’s Balkan Tragedy, the commanding scholarly work on the break-up of Yugoslavia, puts it, As early as 1989 Western governments began to declare that the central European countries were better prepared to make the economic and political transition ...”

“... the killing of Reeva Steenkamp, Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa made her way across courtroom GD at North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria slowly and haltingly. She suffers from severe arthritis and for the duration of the trial she sat on an orthopaedic chair, much smaller than the vast leather seats of the two assessors on either side. Judge Masipa’s entry ...”

“... intrude on your privacy, but we’re both wearing your underpants.’ Calvin Klein is sitting with Susan Sontag. Actually he isn’t but if he were it would sum up what celebrity means in New York.22 May. Watch the second programme in the BBC2 series It’s Not Unusual, in which gays and lesbians, many in their seventies and eighties, recall their experiences ...”

“... but I was unable to explain why.The Arctic would have been easier, but I had no desire to head North. I wanted white and ice as far as the eye could see, and I wanted it in the one place in the world which was uninhabited. I wanted my white bedroom extended beyond reason. I wanted a place where Sister Winniki couldn’t exist. That was Antarctica, and only ...”

“... as a boy, and the tales of ‘little, ultimate creatures’ he came across in the legends of the North. Clue: it wasn’t D.H. Lawrence.A writer, born around 1890, worked bits of ancient writings into his own massive masterwork, magnificently misprising them as he went. Clue: it wasn’t Pound.J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) spent his working life as a ...”

“... her sister Maria, and is remembered for clinging on to her Cornwall habits in the cold and windy north: wearing silk dresses and clipping around the stone floors in her pattens. We meet Tabby and the other servants, the curates and the local families with whom the Brontës interacted. The Diary Papers introduce all their beloved pets; cats and dogs ...”

“... are things of the past. Administration may not be that much more efficient, but order – at least north of the Caucasus – has been restored. Last but not least, the country is no longer ‘under external management’, as the pointed local phrase puts it. The days when the IMF dictated budgets, and the Foreign Ministry acted as little more than an American ...”