“... with much detail, and walk-on cameos by ascertainably ‘real’ 1990 guests – John Major, Richard Rogers, Neil Kinnock and, of course, the richly despised Howard Jacobson. Francis Jay gives an impromptu television interview in which, with all the authority of one who has studied deconstruction at Sussex, he dismisses the shortlisted candidates as ...”

“... Vinal, already the mother of one illegitimate child, swore that the father of her next was one Richard Parkes, ‘husbandman of the parish of Ringmer’. On 25 October Turner set off at 2 a.m. for Ringmer, accompanied by two colleagues from East Hoathly, one of whom, a prosperous farmer called Jeremiah French, was known to Turner as a scourge of paupers ...”

“... displaying Rhodesian military regalia. For the wider American conservative movement, white power may have been a useful dog off the leash when it came to unofficially fighting far-flung communist insurgencies, but it has also been a liability. Faced with the reality of a multiracial America, the mainstream Republican Party has mostly been wary of making ...”

“... photograph, while Abstract Expressionism, or whatever its equivalent in ongoing American poetry may be, continues its fissiparous course. Is Lowell the victim of what he himself called ‘the bravado of perpetual revolution, breakthrough as the stereotype, with nothing preserved’? That, in a sense, would be a fit end for a king, remaining embalmed in the ...”

“... while assaulting the wandering eye and disrupting the balance of the room. Harmony and balance may suggest tranquillity, yet the spatial character of the rococo interior is often vertiginously exciting, the ornament enticing as well as diverting. In one of the smaller rooms at Stupinigi is the soffitto a ghiacci e finte porcellane, a ceiling covered with ...”

“... These men and women had been noticed before: they were the ‘silent majority’ invoked by Richard Nixon. The speechwriter who coined that phrase, Pat Buchanan, would become the insurgent Republican of the 1992 primaries, and at the 1992 party convention he gave a speech that seems the prototype for Trump’s inaugural. In fact, Trump delivered no ...”

“... cropping and composition – did not attract the criticism meted out to Sickert and others, but may have done as much to seed the lessons of modern art in Britain.These early influences are apparent in Sickert’s music-hall interiors of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Whistler is there in the control of low tones: the effects of artificial light in near ...”

“... as being ‘as big as a pigeon’s egg’, something else which like the banana I had never seen.3 May. A distressing call today from Dr C., the oncologist who looked after my friend Anne during her last illness. He talks about hospital services being deliberately run down and the difficulties of ward care due to shortage of staff but it’s only gradually I ...”

“... blankets, sang a refrain: ‘There is hunger in Palestine/there is no hunger in Palestine.’ Richard Cook, a director at UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Administration, said to Azoulay that arbitrary, banal impediments to food supplies were jeopardising the nutritional health of many Palestinians.After 7 October 2023, the Israeli government narrowed its ...”

“... Revisiting​ old haunts is a hazardous pastime. The beloved buildings may look smaller or shabbier, the unforgettable view is ruined by the new solar farm, the once fascinating characters in the novel have lost their power to enchant, everything seems blurred or – the verdict from which there is no appeal – dated ...”

“... were to ask how he came by such detail, one possible answer is that he made it up. As this episode may suggest, the author of this book is the omniscient narrator personified, a participant-observer in every drama. Thus when the young Raymond, a lad of 11 or 12, rushes out onto the hills, Fred lumbers after him, noting the way the bracken bends and breaks ...”

“... motives. The loss of innocence feels to a Murdoch character like an injury for which he may reasonably demand a reparation not to be distinguished in its effects from revenge; his inability to bear his own guilt seems to require an act of self-restoration – or self-annihilation – that risks repeating his crimes. A character is cruel to others in ...”

“... truth of Johnson’s remark that ‘a woman has such power between the ages of 20 and 45 that she may tie a man to a post and whip him if she will.’ McIntyre handles with his usual tact the question of Johnson’s masochism (on which, to borrow Boswell’s verdict on the aristocratic pretensions of Johnson’s friend ...”

“... briefly, Christendom’s centre of gravity lay not in Rome but in London. As Wolsey’s mentor, Richard Fox, acknowledged, the Universal Treaty of London was ‘the best deed that was ever done for the realm of England’. But early the following year, the Treaty came under threat. In January 1519, one of its key signatories, the Holy Roman Emperor ...”

“... Purity. Man Two is successful, manipulative, priapic, with an aridity to his heart: the rock star Richard Katz in Freedom, the ‘famous internet outlaw’ Andreas Wolf in Purity. What seemed in The Corrections like a generous sharing of perspective between characters who, being related, can’t avoid acknowledging that they see things differently – the ...”