“... and a pattern of spikes on a looped line across the hairless skull. It’s glossy raku ceramic, white with blue glaze dripping like fine rain across the head and face, and represents a historic figure, Po’pay, the catalyst of the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in which the Indigenous people of dozens of communities in northern New Mexico rose up against the Spanish ...”

“... truly represent a distinct mutant species of crybaby. Ellis’s​ first non-fiction work, White, is an expansion of his podcast concerns and complaints but not a deepening – more of a distention. Although the book has been promoted as an ‘incendiary polemic’, it’s more of a lazy Susan of memoir, cultural reflections, pharmacological ...”

“... fairly sure to hear of in the course of his schooling, you would be wise to put your money on Sir Christopher Wren. I think the equivalent holds good in Turkey. At least, I am writing this review in a school exercise-book I bought in Istanbul: the front cover bears a portrait of Mimar Sinan, and its reverse side gives a brief biography and enumerates the ...”

“... one by Ian Hamilton Finlay, David Jones’s The Tribune’s Visitation, an early collection by Christopher Middleton, and three by Lee Harwood. The publishing provenance of an outsider poet like Harwood can tell you a lot about his work: Fulcrum, Oasis Books, Pig Press, Galloping Dog, Paladin, Slow Dancer, North and South, Leafe Press, Shearsman. These ...”

“... the unsolved mysteries of the war. They say that Argentine defenders fought back fiercely until a white flag suddenly appeared from an enemy position. One of the subalterns of D Company of the Second Para moved forward to accept the surrender. He was instantly shot dead. Hastings and Jenkins say that it was almost certainly a mishap in the fog of war, rather ...”

“... to come out with the heartless nonsense whose purpose in the end is to serve power. Of Theodore White, the famous chronicler of American Presidents whose death occasioned reams of adulatory prose, Cockburn says that his contribution to the grotesque cult of Reagan was central, and consisted of preparing the public with pious cant about ‘abundance and ...”

“... the Revolution. Schama persuasively argues that slaves themselves transformed a battle between white people over political rights into a black revolution of sorts. (Steven Hahn recently made the same point about the role of slaves in the American Civil War.*) But given the mixed motives and inconsistency of British commanders, Schama’s repeated ...”

“... in the summer. He dresses in the same way every day, in a pair of narrow black jeans and a crisp white shirt; he has his shirts professionally cleaned, a luxury he pays for with the money he earns working in a convenience store two evenings a week. In April 2004, Ahmad is two months away from leaving school. His grades are good enough for him to go to ...”

“... A few weeks ago, in Mexico, I was asked to sign a protest against Christopher Columbus, on behalf of the original native populations of the American continents and islands, or rather, of their descendants. I understand the feelings which inspire such gestures, and have some sympathy with them, although it seems to me that the only object of protesting against something that happened half a millennium ago is to get a little publicity for a cause of 1992 rather than 1492 ...”

“... could tell he had some talent,’ the head coach, Madeleine Barlocher, told his biographer Christopher Clarey, ‘but I had a good group with a lot of young boys with talent … I would never have guessed he would become what he would become.’ The opening chapters of The Master, Clarey’s book on Federer, are full of cautious early assessments of ...”

“... piece by piece after the Second World War; now, after years of degeneration following the white man’s departure, the empires that ruled Africa and Asia don’t seem quite as bad. The perplexingly affirmative work of Niall Ferguson and David Armitage scants, if it doesn’t actually trivialise, the suffering and dispossession brought by empire to its ...”

“... man’. Clara Saint, however, spoke to the French border police, one of whom happened to be a White Russian. Plain-clothed officers took up position close to where Nureyev was sitting with his minders. All he had to do was go up to them and ask for freedom, which he duly did. There was a brief tug-of-war, with Nureyev in the middle, until the French ...”

“... an Arkful of daft creatures. Kermit is on the cover of this book,* bursting through the plane of white paper as if in symbolic disdain for the printed page on which his fame has never relied. The full career of Jim Henson reveals that the gulf between the traditions of fairy tale and the self-inventing styles of television culture generally thought to have ...”

“... Chiang and her husband when he and Auden were visiting China to report on the war with Japan, Christopher Isherwood wrote that she can become at will the cultivated, Westernised woman with a knowledge of literature and art; the technical expert, discussing aeroplane engines and machine-guns; the inspector of hospitals; the president of a ...”

“... for years to come, while his plays began to establish social conscience at the level of style. Christopher Bigbsy, the author of this new biography, has a perfect ear for the manners and motions of Miller’s art, and he tells a gripping story of Miller’s hunt for truth. There are mysteries to bear and ironies to become invested in – all good ...”