“... modern way. Lewis, on the other hand, wearing the kind of bohemian ‘uniform’ favoured by the ‘prewar artist’, remains somehow archaic and insalubrious. ‘Walking home I tried to think what he reminded me of and there were various things. They were all medical except toe-jam.’ Lewis is dirt, then, or an abortion. ‘Under the black hat, when ...”

“... said any such thing, though the next day Tony more or less admitted that her denial wasn’t to be trusted either, before going on to pretend that he still admired Gordon too, and then pledging himself to the cause of peace in the Middle East – it was no surprise that the boldest liar of all came out on top. Fortune favours the brave. In politics, it is ...”

“... to Kingsley Amis on 21 November 1985. He was too ill to hold the pen himself and dictated it to be typed and signed by his secretary at the Brynmor Jones Library in Hull. He told Amis he was going into hospital that day for more tests – ‘only tests, but of course they are looking for something, and I bloody well hope ...”

“... the stakes have never been higher. The occasion was the Future of Britain conference, organised by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and presided over by the man himself. Its theme was that British politics is failing to meet the challenges or seize the opportunities of the 21st century. There were sessions on ...”

“... about the early life of the NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick, begins by comparing American football to slavery. We are shown a group of Black football players having their bodies prodded and measured by white coaches, as they decide who fits the bill and who gets tossed on the scrapheap. Two ...”

“... The resemblance is established in Shadow Sites I (2010), which reinscribes by means of its own kind of graphic manoeuvre an already existing inscription. A shadow site is a built structure invisible at ground level, but thrown into dramatic relief when viewed from above by the slant of the sun’s ...”

“... the Leonora No 3 Overture, or the redoubtable equanimity with which Lukas Foss opened the concert by conducting Mahler’s ‘Revelge’ for Hermann Prey (with televisual reference to the doomed Polish cavalry of 1939) and then confronted the fiendish reveilles of Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw. Yet the most characteristic and memorable images were of ...”

“... his justly-renowned History and Social Influence of the Potato. Smaller-scale and little-known by comparison, but in its unambitious way hardly less fascinating, is N.W. Simmonds’s monograph on bananas, with its thought-provoking insights into early human migrations derived from the study of present-day distributions of the banana’s varieties, each of ...”

“... Great art collections formed by individuals are generally highly specialised – French Impressionist paintings, English sporting pictures, early Chinese bronzes – or somewhat specialised – Classical antiquities, Old Master drawings, Islamic art. What is special about George Ortiz’s collection of antiquities and ethnographic art, part of which is currently on show at the Royal Academy, is its combination of quality and breadth ...”

“... or inadequate investment, or lax monetary management, or deflationary fiscal policies, to be put right by the appropriate bag of economic tricks. Those who belong to what Roy Jenkins once called the ‘radical centre’ rightly reject the economism of their rivals. For them, the crisis is not only, or even ...”

“... applying ‘lessons’ from the imperial past, that just as the Afghans have always thwarted would-be conquerors, they will go on doing so. But they haven’t stopped to consider why the British thought it worthwhile to become involved in Afghanistan in the first place, or what they hoped to achieve. These questions are important. Unless they can ...”

“... What can be done with a people that produces 246 different cheeses? General De Gaulle’s remark may be apocryphal – France has far more than 246 cheeses – but it captures a central dilemma in French history. How could such a diverse collection of peoples be forged into a single nation? The question remains pertinent ...”

“... a nephew, half-English, half-American, and in his dreams entirely Hungarian. He grew up enthralled by his uncle Alex: he can only provide a fond and rather vague sketch of his father, Vincent, and a perfunctory one of his other uncle, Zoltan. The lives of the title are not three but two: uncle and nephew, the last tycoon and the ardent imitator. The ...”

“... circuits came along. Called transistors, they transfer the resistance necessary for the current to be regulated from one end of the device to the other.’ And so on.In some ways this is charming – he has the touching enthusiasm of the recent convert, in contrast to the ‘been there, done that’ flavour of much of the rest of his advice. But it’s also ...”

“... night had 18.7 million viewers; in 1998, the Titanic year, it was 57 million. This is getting to be like the last stages in musical chairs. Folklore says the Academy hires good-looking suits and gowns to fill the theatre seats when stars and quasars retreat to the bar or take meetings. Why can’t we have pretty virtuals to take our places in the living ...”