“... the classicist Daniel Mendelsohn in the New York Review of Books, who attacked its reliance on white space, on aura. The Sappho of the best-known surviving stanzas was a poet, a singer, whose work Carson tried to re-create, but the Sappho in much of If Not, Winter was (he implied) an illusion, a ghostly projection of our collective relationship to ...”

“... were established to promote creationism. But it was during Carter’s unhappy term in the White House that Jerry Falwell and others built the national political organisations that were to become the vehicles of the religious right. When Reagan was elected in November 1980, the long exile of evangelicals from Washington had come to an end. It would be ...”

“... but also reflecting an incipient musical integration. ‘Country and western is the music of the white masses,’ one contemporary soul musician says to Booth. ‘Rhythm and blues is the music of the Negro masses. Today soul music is becoming the music of all the people.’ But Booth sits in on a 20th-anniversary concert tribute to Stax, and finds that the ...”

“... while his studio team and friends look on; Isabella Blow and the Chapman Brothers are there, and Sam Taylor-Wood (as was), as well as the jeweller Shaun Leane, and Sarah Burton, who would take over the label after his death and made Kate Middleton’s wedding dress. All McQueen’s earliest associates seemed to have stayed with him the whole way: this was a ...”

“... The Stranger (1946) – a frankly commercial production which Welles made for another independent, Sam Spiegel – was the first Hollywood feature to refer to the Nazi death camps, and used newsreel clips. The movie, in which Welles hams shamelessly as a German war criminal hiding out in a New England college town, was severely cut. Callow compares its lost ...”

“... still travelling in the wake of Little Richard. The history of rock ’n’ roll focuses on the white triumvirate – Presley, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis, who have at different times heaped contumely on themselves – neglecting its roots in Jazz and the Blues, and a sibling relationship with Soul. Along the way, that history has appropriated the music ...”

“... works the possibilities of dialogue literally translated from the French, and of a Southern poor-white narrative style: ‘There’s this European painter that paints people with big holes in them, holes as big as windows where you see the clear blue sky and white clouds through their thoracic regions, though Marl ...”

“... casting vote. Sugar’s nod for Sky gave Murdoch’s company the majority it needed. It was, as Sam Chisholm, former chief executive of BSkyB, acknowledged, the ‘turning point’ for Sky. By 1993, a running deficit of £47 million had been turned round to a £62 million profit; in 1994 profits rose to £170 million, in 1995 to £237 million. By 1996, Sky ...”

“... with Jeff Eggers, another former SEAL and a special assistant for national security at the Obama White House. It had a foreword by Walter Isaacson, then head of the Aspen Institute, which receives substantial funding from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and has been described by the Economist as ‘a cross between a think tank, a celebrity ...”

“... chances: his affairs with Judith Campbell Exner, who was also the girlfriend of the mobster Sam Giancana, and with Ellen Rometsch, who was believed to be an East German spy and had to be spirited out of the country. His recklessness was far greater than Bill Clinton’s (Dallek found that Kennedy, too, had an affair with a ...”

“... their capes as ‘black friars’, as distinct from Franciscan ‘grey friars’ and Carmelite ‘white friars’. The monastery was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538, whereupon its five-acre precinct became a prime piece of Tudor real estate. Chris Laoutaris’s Shakespeare and the Countess gives a remarkably detailed account of its residents in the ...”

“... Not unlike Les Diaboliques (which was quite as disturbing) in several ways, Psycho was a black and white, low-budget horror movie which for cheapness – in both senses – was filmed by a television crew, while being directed by the A-listed Alfred Hitchcock, by then responsible for huge and glossy Hollywood hits like Rebecca, To Catch a Thief and North by ...”

“... Sacco, who worked in PR, tweeted: ‘Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get Aids. Just kidding. I’m white!’ During the 11-hour flight, she became the number one trending topic on Twitter. ‘No words for that horribly disgusting, racist as fuck tweet from Justine Sacco,’ one person tweeted. ‘Fascinated by the @JustineSacco train wreck. It’s global and ...”

“... serving); Federer’s peacocking entrances to Centre Court (at the 2009 championships he wore a white and gold monogrammed safari suit to every match). Professional tennis requires extraordinary psychological capacities – obsessive focus, epic self-belief – so it would be surprising if the players at the top were perfectly well adjusted. Being motivated ...”

“... in high-class soap operas like Upstairs, Downstairs. In Grosvenor Square today, the Uncle Sam who lords it over the west side is not some latterday Courtauld relative, but a very different creature altogether. Lady Bracknell might be mollified to learn that Mayfair retains its high status and exclusive reputation: but the riches and power to which it ...”