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“... personality in various interludes and ‘interchapters’. He is, he admits, no Holmesian (Richard, not Sherlock) ‘pursuer’ of his subject. But he offers a vivid account of a visit he made to Kensal Green Cemetery as he began work on his biography. It was December (the month in which the novelist died): Thackeray’s grave on the south side, where ...”

“... This is an insight which, developed mathematically, has quite transformed the classical picture of iron laws and inexorable unfoldings. In one of his many postscripts, he refers warmly to one particular applied mathematician, S.M. Ulam, who developed these ideas. Hofstadter is too honest to pass over the fact that Ulam was deeply involved with the development ...”

“... place of ‘the homosexual’ (what does that now mean?) remains undiscussed. The sociobiologistic iron cage – that homosexuals, outside the network of genetic self-advantage, can be thought of as genuinely altruistic – still seems to be present. In the light of the chaotic sexual performance of much of natural life, it’s time to move beyond this ...”

“... of the disease, as presented by Bell and referred to by Orbach: a first medical sighting by Richard Morton and described in his Treatise on Consumption of 1687, Naudeau’s account of a fatal case of self-starvation in 1789, in which the victim’s mother was clearly implicated; William Gull’s and Charles Lasegue’s independent recognition of ...”

“... began to stir, Colin and Mary were woken by the methodical chipping of steel tools against the iron barges which moored by the hotel café pontoon.’ Colin and Mary Who? Or rather, since they turn out not to be married, Colin Who and Mary Who? There is much that we learn about them, but never these simple assurances. The Comfort of Strangers: this, and ...”

“... state. It is not its only crisis. British books on the subject fail singularly to discuss the ‘iron cage of bondage’ which the social state has created: that is to say, the process of bureaucratisation which has de-personalised the most personal service of the modern state. Few functions of the modern state are more miserably associated with ...”

“... he has written a novel called The Memorial; lives with his mother and a younger brother called Richard; works on a movie; has fashionable but uncontroversial left-wing ideas (he speaks himself of his ‘parlour socialism’); confesses to small acts of cowardice. But we know far more about the quality of his attention to the world than we know about ...”

“... UDF was to blame for its violence against Inkatha, Inkatha were not goodies either. The work of Richard Cobb should have made us expect all revolutions to be shot through with villainy, banality and irony. For every saintly Mandela or heroic Steve Biko there were always likely to be several murderous Harry Gwalas, fraudulent Allan Boesaks and others who ...”

“... for full-blown black magic rituals. Parson Adams is strapped to a chair, his head enclosed in an iron mask equipped with an obscenely phallic and pendulous nose, while Fanny is tied down and offered up as a virginal sacrifice to a troupe of depraved nymphets wearing nun’s habits which have been modified to expose their breasts. Down in the ...”

“... shreds of her clothing still had power to heal. Women gave birth more easily when stroked by the iron belt of some ascetic who in life would have been appalled by the touch of a female. After a brisk march through the history of sainthood – from Peter and Paul to the Reformation in just ninety pages – Bartlett turns to a leisured exploration of ...”

“... Fifa committee were extremely hard to buy. The Argentinian representative, Julio Grondona, whose iron control of his country’s FA dated back to the days of the junta, later said that he had been open to voting for England, but his price would have been the return of the Falkland Islands. The official figure put on the cost of the FA bid was £21 ...”

“... trees with the winning name of the Sentier de la Vertu.This is where I lie in wait, sitting on an iron chair, camera controls fine-adjusted. Distance: four to five metres; speed: shutter screen slit 4mm; aperture: depending on which direction she arrives from. I’m very good at roughly guessing the distance. What’s less easy is if she has just one foot ...”

“... in 1678 and became the first Englishman to make the journey to Mecca and return, long before Richard Burton’s celebrated voyage in 1853. Pitts converted to Islam, as so many in his situation did, and although he remained a slave until 1693, when he managed to escape, he seems to have been treated well and to have formed a largely favourable view of his ...”

“... yet somehow distinctive, relatively easy to identify (Norman Foster, along with his former partner Richard Rogers, is English for Architecture). No wonder corporate and political leaders hire this stylish practice: there is a mirroring of self-images here, at once technocratic and innovative, that suits client and firm alike. ‘Foster’ offers an ...”

“... Lindsay’s breathless pen-portrait of his sage is hardly inviting: He’s the one in the non-iron shirt and wrinkle-free suit, jet lag stamped on his face. He’s flown more than three million miles in the last quarter century – further than any of the men who set foot on the moon … He blends in with all the middle-aged men in first class whom you ...”