“... of another link between ritual and power beyond mere legitimation. Harm to the king’s body in war was said to demoralise soldiers and to bring defeat: ‘Disorder in the body entailed disorder in the reign.’ But when land and labour became subject to market forces, so the author tells us, royal control diminished. Contributions by two anthropologists ...”

“... is a Jewish refugee, who escaped from Germany with his mother, just before the outbreak of World War Two, so that the novel takes in Germany, Los Angeles, Mexico, and the North and South of England. On both sides of the Atlantic, privilege is set against poverty; council estates in London confront the gaudy affluence of Willy’s Mexican villa, as well as a ...”

“... by their secrecy as spies; by sexual secrecy; and by the previously hidden life of a ruling class that excluded the rest of society from its secret garden. This rage of discovery is equalled by the obsession of people in charge to keep things secret, not simply with regard to espionage – something that is hardly surprising, particularly if one’s ...”

“... are one of the New England families and much of the book’s appeal is in watching all that class (and, though less important, all that money) getting dirtied up by low types like Warhol and his spooky entourage, by drugs, madness, sex etc. Not only did Edie herself die at a thrillingly young age, but there were also two Sedgwick brothers who went mad ...”

“... other recent stories with elderly protagonists, it also quietly charts collisions of period and class, and shows a keen, wry sense of the displacements worked by social change and old age. Sidney’s understanding is as limited as his vocabulary, which is a small, painfully unreliable work-force, fit for few jobs; Mrs Bittell’s head is ‘clouded by ...”

“... one seems to have contemplated the problems of the future. Can we really maintain for good a first-class base at the other end of the world? And if we can do this, is it worth doing? As the questions pile one on another, the wisest course is to cease these speculations and leave events to decide the future fate of the Falkland Islands. This is what I intend to ...”

“... commonly described as chronicling the decline of a landowning family – as it were, a sequel to War and Peace; and it has been suggested that it draws on Saltykov’s first-hand experience of that milieu, which would go a long way to explain his gloomy outlook: but to see it as social history or even as realistic novel is to miss the point. It’s certainly ...”

“... German people have still not faced up to the full truth: ‘in spite of everything, the war is still unexplained’). Her capacity to register the felt experience transcends the programmatic bent of her fiction. Which is exactly what you can’t say about Heinrich Böll. His journalistic sense of public life has always threatened to circumscribe his ...”

“... classes from which they come’. Cukor is arguing with Veblen’s demeaning Theory of the Leisure Class. He is inviting us to an altogether more elevating conversation between C. K. Dexter Haven, Tracy Lord, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. (There is, as Cavell nicely describes it, a raging ‘thirst for talk’ in all these films.) We are hearing about the ...”

“... that was revealed in the Brexit vote has been given the chance to deepen while the political class has been stuck trying to deliver on the change the Brexit vote called for. The government may be anticipating some gratitude if and when it fulfils the mission the electorate set for it. The electorate may have other ideas. Perhaps an entire political order ...”

“... middling ministers. There has been a substantial increase in the number of female MPs. Since the war there has always been a handful of formidable female MPs – Barbara Castle, Bessie Braddock, Margaret Thatcher, Gwyneth Dunwoody – but never enough to change the boys’ club culture. It was not until the Blair revolution of 1997, which saw the election of ...”

“... in murder’.Unlike in other parts of West Africa, frustration with the political class is tempered by a belief in due process. The coup was met with greater enthusiasm in Mali, which borders Burkina to the north. Mali has been run by a military junta since a coup in August 2020. Sanctions, including border closures, were brought against it ...”

“... Her emphasis is on Franklin as a scientist, very conscious of her professionalism, her social class, her Jewishness and her abilities. For Maddox’s Franklin there was no small talk, no beating about the bush: she was demanding, belligerent, aloof, at times curt, not an easy person to work with, either at King’s (1951-53) or at Birkbeck (1953-58). But ...”

“... They were the containers in which millions of traps were shipped from the Black Country. Did World War Two bring a slump in trapmaking? Not in Australia, where a Wednesfield subsidiary toiled to produce the seven million traps needed to provide skins for army slouch hats and flying-suit linings. In 1953 the spread of myxomatosis failed to spread ‘misery and ...”

“... Two of Lahiri’s stories show what’s missing. Both are set in Calcutta, both in lower-middle-class blocks of flats where only a few residents have telephones or running water, but everyone knows everyone else and interferes in their lives, mostly with the very best intentions. In spite of the current wave of Indian fiction in English, this particular ...”