“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... flew to him, all but carried him to the armchair... Above us was a kitchen ceiling-rack on which May-the-maid had hung socks to dry ... With the damp woollen things I wiped his face – cheeks, eyes, matted hair – again and again; and then my own; our tears mingled in the damp wool. And soon I became aware that the pounding heart was quiet; tears continued ...”

“... back to broken homes without water and electricity, to a blue sky from which bombs and shells may fall without warning. The treatment of the boys at Stoke Mandeville has been made possible by the generosity of the British public. For these boys it has been a happy few months – a respite from the nightmare of war and the squalor of the refugee ...”

“... Richter has substituted for the problem ‘how do I make appropriate, personal marks (which may or may not offer an image of the world)?’ another, newer problem: ‘how do I choose significant items from the inchoate mass of images which demand attention on pages, screens and walls?’ Atlas amounts to a first ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... everything else is the same. The first time they met, Gabrielle (or John Marcher) told Louis (May Bartram) the great governing secret of her/his life. She/he was waiting for a ‘strange, rare and terrible thing’ to happen, an event that would spring at its victim ‘like a hidden beast’ and perhaps ‘obliterate’ that person. This is the language ...”

“... photographs, and what seems in reproduction a surprisingly bad drawing of the poet, but the text may foil anyone whose ‘Larkin’ is the author of the three main volumes of verse – and it is hard to see what other readers the editor could have looked for. Such a reader may finish this enjoyable collection of essays ...”