“... out a simpler diet than we’re used to, an equivalent for rainy, hectic Britain of what Elizabeth David discerned in the Mediterranean diet when she called it ‘the rational, right and proper food for human beings to eat’. Except there’s no romantic sense, as there was in David, of a benign landscape supporting people ...”

“... portrait, albeit of a distinctively colonial character and quality. Last year, the art historian David Bindman, who has studied the picture closely for thirty years, proposed that it is in fact a self-portrait, painted by Williams himself.What is the intent of the image and what is created by its beholders? The problem of Francis Williams’s portrait shows ...”

“... at fringe meetings at Tory conferences where the mood could best be described as hostile – yet David Cameron and even George Osborne appear genuinely committed to the project. They see it as a way of boosting business and of demonstrating their credentials as modernisers. They also believe it will help their electoral prospects in the North. The fate of ...”

“... to pose, the enraged Freud painted over her face and inserted that of his long-time assistant David Dawson. But the baby had not caused offence, so was not painted out, with the result that a naked and strangely breasted Dawson is now seen feeding the child. Freud’s American dealer assumed the picture would be unsellable; it was bought by the first ...”

“... the survivors with machine-gun fire. More than two hundred were killed. The prime minister, David Ben Gurion, instructed Yigal Allon, the operation’s leader, to deport the surviving residents. Another commander, Yitzhak Rabin, issued the order: ‘The inhabitants of Lydda must be expelled quickly, without regard to age.’ These and other episodes of ...”

“... Baldwin died’. Philip Roth has been led to histories of American racism by Coates’s books. David Brooks credits him for advancing an ‘education for white people’ that evidently began after ‘Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston and the other killings’. Even USA Today thinks that ‘to have such a voice, in such a moment, is a ray of light.’ Coates ...”

“... game.) They have better players than we do; but it is possible that we are a better team. David Beckham has flown his hairdresser out to Japan, allegedly because Victoria noticed that his mohican was looking scraggly. (As opposed, of course, to completely twuntish.) There is a theory that he is going to try out a whole new hairstyle for the Brazil ...”

“... entry. He is doing all that he should to ensure that he can make an authorised entry. David Blunkett reacted angrily to this judgment, referring in disparaging terms to lawyers in general and specifically to those who saw in this decision an opportunity to orchestrate a large number of actions for damages against the state. An appeal was ...”

“... envied the men their licence to experience and capture the look of real action. The photographer David Scherman, her new American chum and lover, from whom she learned a lot, pointed out that she was ‘a perfectly bona fide Yank from Poughkeepsie’ and could herself qualify for such a job; so with Withers’s backing she sought and received accreditation ...”

“... million came in only last Friday!’ Easy come, easy go. When the boss of the central bank, David Oddsson, and the finance minister, Arni Mathiesen, declared after nationalising Icesave that Iceland would not pay these debts – or, in Mathiesen’s version, might perhaps settle some part of them – the UK applied its anti-terrorist laws to freeze the ...”

“... that the lobby had played in the affair. There was also a comment piece by the veteran journalist David Broder, which opened with the words: ‘The Obama administration has just suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the lobbyists the president vowed to keep in their place.’ Freeman’s critics maintain that his views on Israel were not his only ...”

“... are often but not always wrong. During Hollywood’s great period the good ones (Irving Thalberg, David Selznick, Darryl Zanuck) knew how to protect and indulge creative talent, but they also knew when to cut it off at the pass. One thing is well known to the modern producer: when a writer/director gets into his messianic period, a period born of popular ...”

“... colour and sharp light, so that the whole thing looks mildly cartoon-like, often resembling, as David Denby says, hyperrealist painting. Or the way we imagined the 1960s when we thought they were still the 1950s. Larry Gopnik, played by Michael Stuhlbarg with a fine capacity for recurring surprise, as if he were Clark Kent who kept forgetting he had another ...”

“... recent Clear (2004), a short but bounding novel in which characters theorise about the illusionist David Blaine, are set in London, but Barker’s territory is the hinterlands of the South-East, where literature doesn’t tend to happen – Luton, Canvey Island, the Isle of Sheppey, Ashford (‘gateway to Europe’). Despite the prizes – the Booker ...”

“... with moss growing on their tongues. The former warden John Davis tells a story about the historian David Cox, who, as an undergraduate, climbed onto the Codrington Library and stole the weather vane from the Christopher Wren sundial. When he was elected a fellow, he climbed back up and replaced it. Nobody, as far as he could tell, had noticed its absence.The ...”