“... was a fishmonger. In the early 1920s he had had an offer from a friend in the film industry, Jack Hyams, to become a partner. Had he accepted he’d have owned a large share in Gaumont-British, but he hadn’t been prepared to take the risk of moving into unknown territory. Within his familiar trade he had done reasonably well in a modest way, owning two ...”

“... weapons sales; even Bernie Sanders agreed. The cut in supply would mean an increase in the price of crude oil – indeed, OPEC spokespeople said this was its purpose – and that would, as Sanders put it, ‘jack up US gas prices’. It was under Biden that the US once again became the world’s largest oil and ...”

“... Hotmail. The early story of this company is told by Po Bronson. Two young would-be entrepreneurs, Jack Smith and Sabeer Bahtia, ‘had been brainstorming possible business ideas for a few months’. One of their problems was not being able to exchange information over e-mail while at their respective workplaces, because they didn’t want their bosses to find ...”

“... on boards by a very different species. The ‘money men’, attentive to the company’s share price rather than to its product, moved in as the City of London – once the centre of industrial investment as well as financial services – ramped through its Big Bang and became a casino of debt speculation. It’s a shame that neither author refers to The ...”

“... than any philosopher in human history, Aristotle included. That continuous brilliance came at a price: Russell said he thought afterwards that the prolonged effort of concentration had unfitted him for absolutely first-class philosophical work thereafter. From time to time these letters talk of letting someone younger and quicker fill in the gaps which he ...”

“... are common to both editions, but each edition has its own errors, too. On 6 December 1966 Jack Dalton gave a lecture at Cornell University on the text of Ulysses, quoting several instances of its corruption, and promising to produce, on contract to Random House, a new and satisfactory edition. In the event, he didn’t live to keep his promise, and ...”

“... ideological war par excellence – a war in which the defeat of the nation would not be too high a price to pay for the victory of certain ideas.’ Like all distinctions based purely on ideas, this is neat but historically somewhat difficult to referee. The cry ‘Better Hitler than Blum’ was, after all, a fairly common one among conservatives who loathed ...”

“... the sternest prohibitions of any church, having shunned the Catholic let-out of annulment at a price. But what scriptural authority could these rules claim? Yes, Jesus had said that ‘those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’ But what about those who had sundered? How was the Church to apply its message of compassion to them?Fisher ...”

“... I liked it. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of the brands acceptable to Bruno. If you ordered Jack Daniel’s, for instance, Bruno would tell you that you were more or less a fool, in thrall to Madison Avenue. Tanqueray gin and Chivas Regal also earned you a rough ride. But Old Grand-Dad was jake with Bruno, a good, unfashionable whiskey. So it was my ...”

“... in the film of Graham Greene’s The Man Within, the ventriloquist Maxwell Frere in Dead of Night, Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest – tended to make a dark festival out of the business of being everything but the one thing specified. Trust is an actor’s medicine, they spoon it into themselves for comfort, but in Redgrave’s case the ...”

“... who admires Porter’s savage attacks on metropolitan manners, verbal clumsiness is simply the price to be paid for Porter’s fecundity and invention – the cost of weariness after years at the typewriter bashing the smoothies. For others perhaps less taken by the satirist, less nostalgic for consumer bric-à-brac and brand-names, the difficulty is in ...”

“... of real brothers but filled with their surrogates, many based on real people (Toby in Typee, Jack Chase in White-Jacket, Queequeg in Moby-Dick); his attachment to Hawthorne is another example of displaced fraternity. Parker occasionally, and ill-advisedly, uses his knowledge of Melville’s family as a foundation for critical interpretation: he admires ...”

“... also an opportunity to take in complimentary product. A gallery is anywhere with wall space and a price list. It doesn’t have to be a white cube or a turbine hall, an old chapel or a revamped industrial unit. Corporate operations are generous with their holdings: Jim Dine figures you glimpse from an arcade, secured by thick glass and ever-vigilant ...”

“... children to the black-windowed limo that will carry them to school. This otherness comes with a price. ‘Serious money buys separation from city life.’Knowles is an outsider, drifting in the reflected glamour of the streets, registering names and brands. But she is also plotting to get inside. In a restaurant at the Royal Exchange, in the City, she ...”

“... at Nato expansion. Talking points from Kissinger, John Mearsheimer, David Harvey, Bernie Sanders, Jack F. Matlock Jr et al are cited everywhere, along with Russian disinformation (the Russian TV station RT has a huge following on Weibo). Ukraine is often described as a failed state, its only hope of survival to accept its role as a buffer zone (‘the ...”