“... There’s no question that O’Connor was doing the latter. Gooch reports that when the poet John Crowe Ransom selected one of her stories to read aloud in Iowa, he substituted the word ‘negro’ for the slur. O’Connor complained that he’d ruined the story. ‘The people I was writing about would never use any other word.’That O’Connor had a ...”

“... justice: ‘Beckmann had no place in the advanced art world of the early 1980s – not one of the major modernist art historians ever reflected publicly on his art.’ This is true enough, and it took time for Kentridge to be appreciated too, but Koerner doesn’t reflect on why this was so. In his view, it seems, expressionistic ‘sketches of ...”

“... is an aimless walk in the rain; yet the book is full of surprising affections, it is a major sprawl of words with uncanny energy and plenty to say about ‘difference’, and about equality of a kind: the sort of book in short that people usually call a novel, because there is nothing else to call it. Admittedly, it is not a novel that could have ...”

“... for instance, she provides a lively account of the intricate emotional manoeuvres performed by John Banks’s splendidly over-the-top costume drama The Island Queens (banned under Charles II in 1684, rewritten and rehabilitated under Anne as The Albion Queens, 1704), during which Mary and her victorious antitype Elizabeth enjoy the first of their many ...”

“... puppets. But his experience anticipated that of thousands of others. The first film we see by any major director usually makes a mark, but we don’t always feel we have seen Saturn swallowing his sons.The first Buñuel film seen by most people of my generation who were not film-club addicts was probably Viridiana (1961). After two Surrealist films made in ...”

“... that an ‘African’ was anyone determined to make a future within Africa. It was pioneered by John Garang, the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south, as a way of holding together the New Sudan he hoped to see. In contrast, its exclusive meaning came in two versions, one hard (racial) and the other soft ...”

“... Years later, when much cream had been spread and rouge faded and money spent, figures such as John Richardson, Graham Sutherland and Bruce Chatwin would have dealings with Helena Rubinstein. Rubinstein trusted Richardson, in as much as she trusted anyone, because he told her that certain paintings in her vast art collection that she believed were ...”

“... of its electoral successes. Against the Washington Consensus, a term introduced by the economist John Williamson to describe the standard package of neoliberal reforms, stood the Buenos Aires Consensus, a manifesto signed in 2003 by the heads of Brazil and Argentina, Lula (Luiz Inácio da Silva) and Néstor Kirchner. Yet while Pink Tide governments mounted a ...”

“... to hoover up claims. By 1889 De Beers Consolidated Mining Limited controlled Kimberley’s two major mines, which had a combined value of £23 million. The company could now switch from surface digging to sinking shafts and invest in the automated sorting of diamonds from blue ground. As well as reducing production costs, they set prices by organising a ...”

“... can’t carry much at my age. A little pint bottle is quite heavy.’ He introduced me to John Russell, an 88-year-old ex-engineer in a residential care home. ‘I saw one old lady trying to stagger off with six bottles,’ Russell said. ‘They were carried for her by a complete stranger.’ He introduced me to Joan Bufton, whose daughter needs ...”

“... sharply cued: the irony of The Magnificent Ambersons is implicit. Welles always thought this his major effort; and there is hardly a performance of the 1940s to set beside the vehemence Agnes Moorehead brought to the role of Aunt Fanny. Welles’s own gradual descent, in the next two decades, into miscellaneous acting in parts that ranged from Mr Rochester ...”

“... special interests and ignorance. Hence, on the one hand, the adventures of people like North, John Poindexter, Dennis Ross, Howard Teicher and Michael Ledeen, and, on the other hand, the amazing pudeur of the Secretary of State, whose position on Irangate matters, according to the Tower Report, was one of complete detachment. Representative Tom Lantos of ...”

“... with Oslo-style diplomacy) has become a respectable part of public discourse. Israel has played a major part in the neoconservative turn of American foreign policy. No one can discount the role of its lobbyists in building support for what would once have been considered extreme and dangerous foreign policy adventurism. But the Israel lobby could never have ...”

“... Pervez Musharraf. The single, strong parent in this case was a desperate State Department – with John Negroponte as the ghoulish go-between and Gordon Brown as the blushing bridesmaid – fearful that if it did not push this through both parties might soon be too old for recycling. The bride was certainly in a hurry, the groom less so. Brokers from both ...”

“... model galleon sat on a table. Photos of him meeting foreign dignitaries were framed on the wall: John McCain, Vladimir Putin, Jens Stoltenberg.Đukanović stared at me intently during our conversation; a fat watch slid up and down his left wrist as he spoke. ‘Serbia always thought of us as the annoying little rock in their shoe,’ he said, explaining that ...”