“... to become merely a marginal, rather literary-looking advert for a multimedia franchise a bit like Star Wars, only bigger. The footnotes, languages, scripts, maps and appendices that are so much a part of the Lord of the Rings experience are about to be replaced with fast-food tie-ins (a deal with Burger King has been announced), a hit pop record, trading ...”

“... lot of stuff I didn’t want to hear.’ She decided to stop talking to the bot. Her half-brother, Christopher Jones, commiserates with her and says she’s fallen for ‘death capitalism … they lure you into something in a vulnerable moment.’Both Barbeau and Angel used an app called Project December, the founder of which, Jason Rohrer, is profiled in ...”

“... Sjöström’s Ingeborg Holm and Stroheim’s Greed to Preminger’s Fallen Angel, Cukor’s A Star Is Born and Spielberg’s Jaws. The possibilities of staging in depth seem virtually limitless, and the promise of stylistic history is handsomely kept. Even if it’s true that too many directors make things easy for themselves, and that in many current ...”

“... a great shower of light flying behind it, and also that the thing itself doesn’t look like a star but seems circular. In fact what is surprising is that a comet should look like the illustrations of comets. It’s so bright it’s as if there is a hole in the surface of the sky, a porthole through which the light is streaming from the shining world ...”

“... from Smyrna, a Ioseph, a Samouel, a Nigella, an Aemilia, a Martin, a Loukipher and a Christopher. The latter are all late and reveal the way that Greek names changed over time, with the introduction of Roman names, Jewish names and Christian names. Romans had three names, an extremely limited repertoire of forenames (praenomina) such as ...”

“... Murphy, the principal trumpet of the LSO, who did the opening trumpet solo in the music for Star Wars. The service due to kick off at 11.30, George arrives with ten minutes to spare only to find the church already full, the congregation seated, silent and expectant. It begins promptly at 11.30 with everyone behaving impeccably and not a cough or a ...”

“... reaction to the failed Los Angeles mayoral campaign of Spencer Pratt, a right-wing reality TV star, in June. A report on Bloomberg describes what happened when it became clear that Pratt’s ‘probability’ of victory on Kalshi and Polymarket had been much higher than his share of the vote turned out to be. Social media lit up with accusations of ...”

“... Mailer’s wingman to be. The stern upholder of heterosexual norms was a later guise. Along with star-spangled kitsch such as My Love Affair with America and neocon tracts such as The Bloody Crossroads, The Present Danger and World War IV, Podhoretz fathered a pair of sequels to Making It, further investigations of the wonder of himself. This was not ...”

“... leading literary scholars have similarly written about their favourite critical subjects, such as Christopher Ricks on Tennyson or Marilyn Butler on Jane Austen. There are one or two notable absences among historians who have written principally on British topics – nothing from Linda Colley or Quentin Skinner, for example – and some of the best-known ...”

“... compulsively’. To begin with, she tried her hand at writing poetry. ‘Unicorn’, the star of the collection published by Rosemary Hill last year, first came out with a tiny press in 1963. A cardboard theatre and a vulgar virgin; a mythical beast with ‘little hooves’ that ‘click like false teeth’. At the age of 23, Carter had ...”

“... ways it was exacerbated – by the fact that she rapidly rose up the party echelons to become a star. In the words of Hannah Arendt, she ‘was and remained a Polish Jew in a country she disliked and a party she came soon to despise’. It is a peculiarity of Luxemburg’s thought – one of her unique contributions – that her critique didn’t temper her ...”

“... though not yet well-known; she had been named after Linda Darnell, her mother’s favourite film-star; she adored cats, but was allergic to their fur. She was involved with various liberal causes, and sometimes asked me to accompany her on protest marches. (Tone, on the other hand, while claiming to be totally non-political, would often express opinions that ...”

“... was a mistake to get involved.’ In order to return to power, Bergoglio hitched his wagon to the star of Antonio Quarracino, who was appointed archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1990. Quarracino, like Bergoglio a Peronist, disliked the government of Alfonsín, who, as Jimmy Burns writes, was ‘the first democratically elected Argentine president seriously to ...”

“... are giving up their jobs in favour of begging. ‘Scruffy Dave Naylor,’ according to the Daily Star, ‘has got it made. He can earn up to £85 a day – doing nothing. He just haunts a tube station looking pathetic, and people drop their hard-earned cash into his plastic cup. For dirty, greasy-haired Dave, 19, is king of the hard-faced professional ...”

“... in, and when the two clashed head-on in spring 2003 had no difficulty prevailing. Britain was star performer in the G8, with no reason to truckle to the wishes of others. In the autumn, Brown told the party thatWhile America and Japan have been in recession – while half of Europe is still in recession, Britain with a Labour government pursuing Labour ...”