“... the passionate hater of Blair and Blairism who has a place in his heart for the Fabians and the white heat of technology; the enthusiast for Portsmouth’s Tricorn Centre (above), demolished in 2004, who dotes on Lutyens; the proud insulter of Islam who loves the multiculturalism of Birmingham; the critic of colonialism who relates the horrors of the Opium ...”

“... doubt that Knox has suffered. But the photo feels somehow unbearably false.In the New York Times, Sam Tanenhaus was dismissive of Knox’s ‘well-orchestrated round of TV appearances’ and pointed out that her ghostwriter had previously collaborated with Socks, ‘the Clintons’ “first cat”’. Then he got on to what really bothered him: Knox’s ...”

“... 22 September. XR has constructed a lightvessel on wheels, about the size of a bus. In large white letters on the red hull: ‘Sound the Alarm. Climate Emergency.’ It makes its stately way along the front from Hove towards the conference centre, with an entourage of noisy activists, many on bicycles, sounding their bells. It’s equipped with an ...”

“... about whom and Harriet Beecher Stowe he writes his best criticism, the father is obviously White Master, though there is also White Mistress, in whose capacity to read and write, and in her willingness to teach them both to a young slave, Douglas begins to discover the instrument both of freedom and revenge. Fear of ...”

“... canon. For Q.D. Leavis – no friend of multiracial Britain – his prose was implicitly ‘white’, because it draws ‘on the accumulated associations of a race’. But as most proselytising was done by African evangelists, rather than white missionaries in Africa, the text became rooted in the continent, often ...”

“... it’s the same game. Like the Russian oligarchs, Branson has made little of his money in the white heat of market competition. He prefers to avoid competition when he can. His business strategy is to get as close as possible to the people with power and then exploit the connection for all it’s worth. As Bower reports, Branson’s record in launching ...”

“... in a pile of abandoned stuff outside one of the houses, a rise and fall French light fitting, white pottery shade, a little battered, but with the counterweight intact. It’s a nice find, though, like its ex-owners, we don’t need the fitting, but if we did … It’s cheering for R., who’s in turmoil over developments at the magazine and has pretty ...”

“... detached and commanding narrative voice which broods on the pathos of distance: between black and white, home and abroad, innocence and experience, men and women. These stories have dispensed with the services of a narrator whose sentimental and veterinary education might reconcile separate worlds, might dramatise growth or assimilation. The writing ...”

“... called Basta Pasta on 17th Street. I thought that sounded like the kind of place my friend Sam and I would find insufficiently grand for breakfast, but when I got there I saw that it was in fact rather posh. Lots of yellow lighting and noise but most of all there was heat – it felt like an oven and half the old-timers were falling asleep as I came ...”

“... asked me anything like that before. What would I have to do?’ she said. ‘Would you fuck with Sam?’ Warhol asked. (Sam was one of his crew.) ‘Could I wear a blindfold?’ she replied. This is all good material, evidence of Warhol’s increasing fame. But some of it is hard to believe. Did anyone really shout ‘Get ...”

“... a chapter to itself in an 1897 book on women’s sweated labour, Robert Harborough Sherard’s White Slaves of England. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Cradley Heath was known as the world’s capital of hand-hammered chain-making, and boasted, somewhat weirdly, that the anchor chain of the Titanic had been manufactured there. It was an ...”

“... until they have ripped the guts out of these decent Victorian villas to turn them into models of white and modish minimalism.5 March. On my walk I pass the Primrose Hill Community Library, which is closed to borrowers today but open for children, who throng the junior library, some of them sitting with an adult presumably learning to read, others in groups ...”

“... bibliographers, theatre-historians, Marxists, historicists new and old. Some wretched ‘white British Shakespearean scholar’, scourged in half a paragraph for a lifetime’s imperception, is well on his chastened way back to the sulphurous and tormenting flames before I realise that he bears my own name. This is Bardbiz, nor are we out of ...”

“... of justice’ is a consensual duty in which Lord Hailsham and Labour’s Attorney-General Sam Silkin laboured alongside each other, while the pupating leadership of the SDP (then in Mr Callaghan’s Cabinet) averted their faces – or perhaps did not. All have shared in the work of ‘strengthening the jury system’ by diluting the unanimous ...”

“... overlooking the sea. The beach was beautiful, part fine sand, part tiny pebbles. Even the local white wine was surprisingly drinkable.’ If Knowlson’s story is going to follow Beckett on his hols, why stop here? Why was the plonk ‘surprisingly’ drinkable? Is this a comment on Sardinian wines in general or just those of that particular year? What ...”