“... knock. In the Thirties, there were a number of editors to whom this could not have happened. They may have been right or wrong as political guides, but they were a power in the land and had secure arrangements with their publishers. J.L. Garvin, a gifted Irishman, edited the Observer (of which my father was proprietor) and wrote signed leaders for thirty ...”

“... could be known, and could attract a blaze of publicity – and he rode them on a tight rein. It may be supposed, however, that, for reasons of friendship and for the sake of both of the friends in question, Cockburn’s letter describes Jeffrey’s editorial methods as more fearsomely authoritarian than they really were. Contributing to this quarterly can ...”

“... electric blankets, and came back empty-handed: not many shops in Venice sell electric blankets in May. Eventually some were sourced, delivered and concealed under beach towels, and their cables covered over with sand. Sun and Sea (Marina) is an hour-long opera written by three Lithuanian women, Lina Lapelytė, Vaiva Grainytė and Rugilė ...”

“... had founded a group of avant-garde artists, Der Blaue Reiter. The ‘almanac’ they published in May 1912 reproduced tribal art, peasant art and children’s drawings as well as work by Delaunay, Rousseau and Van Gogh. Kandinsky contributed articles. Münter kept his pictures from this period, despite legal attempts to wrest them from her, even after his ...”

“... streets have a lot in common with museums – and that the pleasures and interest streets offer may be greater – has a history which parallels that of Modernism. The delirious museum Storrie assembles in his imagination runs together the domain of objects caught in the museum net and that of objects which still float free. Primary texts are those in which ...”

“... of time). Steve Richards – a pseudonym, no relation to the biographer of Gordon Brown – may or may not still be in hiding in Dallas; Chris Griscom has latterly retreated to her Light Institute in New Mexico. Nobody of any significance has materialised to replace them. Whatever happened to all the magicians and the ...”

“... or become offices, hotels, museums or university buildings. The plasterwork in a grand building may have been preserved, but has to fight it out with smart new office desks. Smaller domestic interiors may preserve an undatable ceiling rose or clumsy chimneypiece, things covered in the estate agent’s prospectus by the ...”

“... sisters voted for Eva Joly, the Green candidate, in the first round and planned to abstain on 6 May. Her brother would vote for Hollande in both. ‘My sister, who’s rich and spoiled, will vote for Mélenchon,’ she said. My friend, neither rich nor spoiled, voted for him too. The élan of Mélenchon’s campaign was impressive but it concealed the ...”

“... words, an ‘additive subtraction’. Such a work has also, of course, to live in a world that may fill it with meaning or form; John Cage had already observed of some white paintings of Rauschenberg’s that they were ‘landing strips’ for light and shadow. Cage, whose 4’33” is just the most notorious instance of an apparently silent work filled ...”

“... pictures in which pure colour realises its full potential. It comes to have a life of its own that may contribute very little to, even interfere with, other strands of meaning. One influence on Van Gogh’s shadow-free art was the strong, flat patterning of Japanese prints. The colours, however, are closer to those of Indian paintings in which garden parties ...”

“... threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people’. Moderate Arab regimes may frown in public, but behind closed doors they will thank Israel: the destruction of Tehran’s nuclear programme may even strengthen the fight against nuclear proliferation and thus win praise from ‘the enthusiastic ...”

“... and still capture a good deal besides. And it’s the besides that is often the point: there may be a central or off-central subject in a Klein photograph, but at least half the drama unfolds at the edges, where nobody is quite sure if they are in the frame or why. Another example, taken on Mayday in Moscow in 1961, is better known because it appears in ...”

“... The London mayoral elections are on 1 May. The elections for the London Assembly take place at the same time. One salient fact about them is that abstention isn’t a responsible option. The election takes place under a bizarrely complicated system in which 14 seats, belonging to geographical constituencies, are awarded on a first past the post basis ...”

“... not central to an understanding of his work. There are portraits, including a fine El Greco that may or may not be of the architect; there is Bassano’s Tower of Babel, showing masons, bricklayers, plasterers and carpenters at work; there are views made by Canaletto a couple of hundred years later that show Palladio’s ...”

“... Portrait of a Woman, ‘La Bella’ is one of a class of pictures of handsome Venetians that may be portraits of brides, courtesans or recently married women, or may be idealised images: pin-ups not persons. Palma Vecchio’s portrait of a young man, on the other hand, while not definitely of Ariosto (although the book ...”