“... far the most popular politician in the country, and if nothing were done about it, the most likely victor in the oncoming presidential election. With unprecedented speed – the average time for judging an appeal was cut by three-quarters to eliminate the danger – the verdict not merely confirming but increasing his sentence was handed down in January ...”

“... non-fiction, to see how porous the parameters between invention and personality are. I remembered Victor Maskell, the art historian and spy in John Banville’s The Untouchable, who liked to quote Diderot: ‘We erect a statue in our own image inside ourselves – idealised, you know, but still recognisable – and then spend our lives engaged in the effort ...”

“... on sugar production, but Fanon had little contact with them. He attended the prestigious Lycée Victor Schoelcher, where his teacher was the poet Aimé Césaire, who had won praise in Paris from André Breton for his 1939 poem ‘Notebook of a Return to My Native Land’. Césaire was one of the founders of the Négritude movement, which Fanon admired for ...”

“... while colluding with it sub rosa. Behind closed doors in Washington, France’s ambassador Jean-David Levitte – currently Sarkozy’s diplomatic adviser – gave the White House a green light for the war, provided it was on the basis of the first generic UN Resolution 1441, as Cheney wanted, without returning to the Security Council for the second ...”