“... aesthetic types; he took to frequenting Mrs Jack’s, the salon of the fabulously wealthy Isabella Stewart Gardner. Having raised three gay nephews, Mrs Jack was particularly tolerant of homosexuals, and was an influential patroness of the arts. Eliot’s correspondence with her suggests they had a number of friends in common. His ‘closest ...”

“... to tell us whether production and consumption per capita rose or fell. But it is plain that the home market expanded, exports grew, and the balance of trade appears to have been favourable for most of Elizabeth’s reign: the large amounts of Spanish bullion arriving at the Mint and the substantial increase in the money supply point conclusively in that ...”

“... enters, consist of full-throttle solos by his star sidemen, Coleman Hawkins on tenor sax and Rex Stewart on cornet, as though their deep, manly voices – their figurative brass – would distract listeners from the ensemble’s complicity and literal support of the song’s demeaning lyrics, sung by Katherine Handy (W.C. Handy’s daughter), which include ...”

“... spent childhood holidays, that he really loved.He had wanted to raise his son there, to work from home, be ‘supported by the landscape’ and go on long walks: he didn’t write much about walks or landscapes, but he did once mention how much he distrusted the way W.G. Sebald, in his much admired Rings of Saturn (1995), ‘morosely trudged through the ...”

“... An arthritic Chuck Berry on TotP, slobbering the playground snigger of ‘My Ding-a-Ling’? Rod Stewart jiggling his satiny wee buttocks like some bored old burlesque artist? Any of this doing it for you, kids? The backroom intimacy spotlit by Mapplethorpe and Smith looked deeply subversive, but had none of the usual tawdry appliqué of ‘erotica’: its ...”

“... potent cult figure. Canetti chose a language and its literature, but his genius has no setting or home. He was born in 1905 in Ruschuk, Bulgaria, into a merchant clan of Sephardic Jews originally from Spain, and retaining from it a four-hundred-year-old cultural memory. Among themselves, they spoke the Spanish dialect called Ladino, and they had until ...”

“... own mixed feelings about film acting. Some movie stars – Ingrid Bergman, say, or James Stewart – are excellent in almost everything they do. Others have glory years interspersed with disappointments. And then there is Taylor. Although technically superb as a film actor, having been schooled since her childhood on the MGM lot, her performances ...”

“... budget. We created this me-first world, now we should give something back,’ says 74-year-old Stewart Dakers. The Mail warns that the ‘Young face future of higher taxes to pay for parents who won’t save, says BoE man.’ Another article in the Guardian tells us: ‘The one demographic group that has not seen its incomes fall since the recession is ...”

“... They described foster carers who ‘could no longer manage [his] behaviour’ and children’s home staff who won his trust, then moved on. The saddest paragraphs were the ones that gave a glimpse of the boy he might have been. ‘When it was suggested to William [then aged ten] that he had the ability to attend mainstream education he was ...”

“... Roosevelt riding at its head, followed by a man with a huge US flag. He and his son Kermit sent home, not a modest set of ‘specimens’, but 512 trophies, including nine white rhino (already rare), seven cheetahs, 17 lions and 11 elephants. Even in those days, this tally provoked international uproar. Less remarkable hunters were not exempted from heavy ...”

“... beside others who had fought and suffered for the cause of Ireland: Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Paddy Dignam. Although there is a large collection of Casement documents in the National Library in Dublin (and other items which he brought back from Africa and South America – including costumes and a butterfly collection – in the National ...”

“... promoting hikes in achieved selling prices, while encouraging the neurotic impulse to regard your home as a volatile asset. The canny speculator should be alert for the optimum moment to cash in. Three-bed flats are on offer at £750,000. The average rent in the street is calculated at £1666 per month. Inspired by this febrile vision, householders dig. There ...”

“... into criminals.’ They were criminals under international law, of course, but what were they at home? What is a crime if the rule of crime is limitless?It makes more sense to link the Mabuse fantasy, the dream of the infinitely intelligent malign genius, to the mentality that Arendt, in another book, associates with a particular German mood in the ...”

“... not to mention many of our trees and houses, have longer histories than our country. My family home in Bouillon, on the French border, is decked with photographs of relatives who were born before Belgium was created. There are wooden clogs under the stairs that are older than Belgium. My family is working-class and post-industrial: Walloon first, European ...”

“... self-assured and incurably naive. David Foster Wallace said that he spoke like ‘Jimmy Stewart on acid’ (though Lynch’s addictions were the diner-appropriate kind: coffee, sugar, cigarettes). Whatever the contradiction – mainstream avant-gardist, reactionary visionary, pervert in a top-buttoned shirt – it could be reduced to something ...”