“... important political thinkers do not really belong in this club of international superstars. One, James Madison from Virginia, is more than just a superstar in the United States. He is one of the secular gods of the American Republic, the architect of its Constitution and the author of many of the Federalist Papers written in its defence, including ...”

“... this mind are very numerous and apparently diverse, among them Einstein, Darwin, Spengler, William James, as well as writers such as Gertrude Stein, Joyce and Proust, artistic schools such as naturalism and futurism, and cultural phenomena such as the ‘child cult’ exemplified by the regrettable popularity of Charlie Chaplin. The principal villain however ...”

“... a gallery above, Grave persons frown upon their love; Yonder behind the silken screen Whispers the bishop with the queen. These hold the future tightly reined, It shall be as they have ordained; The bridal bed already made, The crypt also richly arrayed. At her funeral he read a poem, the last in a sequence called ‘Runes’, in which the word ...”

“... Caramanian Exile’ (which draws parallels between the British and Ottoman empires), or James Quinn on the travel memoirs and historical writing of the militant nationalist John Mitchel after he was transported to Bermuda, the reach of the British Empire matters as much as the comparative discussion. But Transitions is traditional in the way it ...”

“... the unquestioning service he performs for Lord Darlington, an aristocratic English Nazi, played by James Fox. ‘Let us make a film in which the representation of fascism would engage with the fascism of representation,’ Rose writes. ‘A film, shall we say, which follows the life story of a member of the SS in all its pathos, so that we empathise with ...”

“... Carter Family, Morton Feldman, Beatrice Lillie (and fairies at the bottom of the garden), Elmore James, Giulio Cesare, Miss Kitty Wells, Vespro della beata vergine, South Pacific, Pet Sounds, Les Négresses Vertes, Dusty in Memphis, Ferrier’s Kindertötenlieder, Toots and the Maytals, Têtes Raides, Lulu, Lulu – even Gurdjieff’s potty piano ...”

“... cope. Karen was born in Beirut and came to the UK when she married a Lebanese man who lived in Bishop’s Stortford. The marriage broke up around 2008 and she took the boys back to Beirut, returning with them to London in 2014 and taking a private rental in Grenfell Tower. It wasn’t easy to pay the rent, given London prices. She could only work 16 hours ...”