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“... poems such as ‘The Song of the Honey Bee’, written for the short-lived marriage of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, or ‘A Masque for Three Voices’, composed in honour of the Queen Mother’s 90th birthday. Yet even at his worst, as in these lines from the survey of 20th-century history he includes in his tribute to the Queen Mum, one can’t help ...”

“... at these schools is that they exercise an outsized influence in American society, whether the field is journalism, popular culture, medicine, law, finance or government. All of the Supreme Court justices who decided the affirmative action cases went to colleges and law schools that practised affirmative action. All but one received their law degrees from ...”

“... among teaching staff. For the most part our intellectual existence remains siloed, with each field of knowledge having its own vocabulary and organised into a discrete ontological formation. In Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995), Michel-Rolph Trouillot insisted that ‘history is the fruit of power but power itself is never so ...”

“... of, but it also means that Britain is never much further than ‘nine meals from anarchy’, as Andrew Simms, head of the New Economics Foundation, put it.A sudden disruption, caused by extreme weather, or an energy crisis, would leave a government depending on the expertise of the supermarkets, currently servicing a Byzantine consumer choice model, to get ...”

“... has developed into what by today’s undemanding standards is an articulate politician, who can field questions from viewers on television for hours as confidently and lucidly as he lectures journalists in interviews, or addresses partners at summit meetings, where he has excelled at sardonic repartee. The intelligence is limited and cynical, above the ...”

“... the diaspora has cultivated a harmless minority identity through Burns Clubs and mutual-help St Andrew Societies. Only in the last 30 years has there been an upsurge of enthusiasm for ‘Scottish heritage’, a spreading craze in North America and Europe which is all about kilts, Highland Games and gruesome invented ceremonies like ‘The Kirkin’ o’ the ...”

“... happen,’ even though there has been an increase in the number of wars. Later in the same volume Andrew Linklater maintained that ‘there is no doubt that globalisation and fragmentation have reduced the modern state’s willingness and capacity to wage the kinds of war which typified the last century.’ America, Britain and some cronies may have lapsed ...”

“... thus instantly plunging Japan and probably the world into depression. The London-based consultant Andrew Smithers calls his gloomy analysis ‘Japan as a Laboratory for Economic Theory’ because no major economy has ever run up such an extraordinary peacetime debt, or had so few ideas about how to ease its burden.Last year, the 171-year-old Sogo Department ...”

“... to Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington, Viscount Wolseley, who served at the Indian Mutiny, and Field Marshal Frederick Roberts, who in 1868 distinguished himself in a punitive raid against the Ethiopians. John Donne was down there, too, and maybe his ‘Epicedes and Obsequies upon the Death of Sundry Personages’ would travel up through the ...”

“... else take it very seriously and achieve something really great, since to be a mediocrity in this field would give no satisfaction.’ Lucian Freud’s comment on this lovely piece of high-mindedness is: ‘It always seemed understood.’ Freud​ died in 2011 and the amount of first-hand information available about his antics means that Feaver could easily ...”

“... Views on Everything (‘Yes, Terry, I do know all the lesser-known Handel operas. I told Andrew Porter he was right – they are the greatest of musical masterpieces’). I was rapt, like a hysterical spinster on her first visit to Bayreuth. Schwärmerei time for T-Ball.The Sarajevo obsession revealed itself early on: in fact, inspired the great ...”

“... but ‘feedback’. This term was popularised by cybernetics, an interdisciplinary field that emerged from the Second World War, and brought together psychiatrists, computer scientists and biologists in a collective effort to understand the way organisms – and potentially machines – constantly adapt to a changing environment. From the ...”

“... after graduating in 1950, and worked as an agronomist for the colonial government. He made regular field trips not only to study Guinea’s social structure and soil – he conducted its first agricultural census – but to assess the readiness of the population for a war of liberation. Cabral’s anti-colonial activism angered the Portuguese secret police: he ...”

“... persuasion: several centuries of debunking patriarchy’s fallacies didn’t prevent the rise of Andrew Tate. They also serve as a reminder of feminism’s own internal tensions. The history of pro-women causes is littered with privileged women kicking down on those with fewer advantages. Perhaps the real feminist value in returning to these early modern ...”

“... and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.The Hobbit was a great success, and its publisher, Stanley Unwin, wanted a sequel. He didn’t ...”