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“... for the arrangements. And overseeing the whole enterprise alongside Bowie was his manager, Tony Defries, whose taste and talent for theatrical gestures rivalled Bowie’s own. The metamorphosis couldn’t stop at Ziggy Stardust: butterflies, as Bowie realised but his friend and rival Marc Bolan didn’t, are ephemeral. Five years later, when Bowie made ...”

“... Social Exclusion Unit began to inject millions of pounds into the worst ‘problem estates’. Tony Blair pioneered the public-private partnerships that operate today, whereby estates are demolished and council tenants rehoused in ‘social rented’ properties administered by housing associations, while developers plug the funding gap for new houses by ...”

“... Johnson went with the utopian socialists too. It was in the spirit of William Morris, Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin that those family gaggles of Routemaster fans came out to bid the old version of the bus farewell, in the belief that efficiency and the bottom line aren’t enough, that the artefacts a city holds in common must be made with care and ...”

“... Clark MP, and – apparently – various dashing and extant English aristocrats, including Andrew Parker Bowles. Rupert Campbell-Black, wealthy landowner, sometime world champion showjumper, sometime Tory MP and sports minister, exuder of brio, glamour and charisma, is an all-round amoral charmer and shit, immune to scandal and opinion, and the envy of lesser ...”

“... his mother were chiefly preoccupied with making life more tolerable for him by navigating Camilla Parker-Bowles back into public acceptability. Without offending the wish of two divorcees for a decent life together, one can surely point out that, set against the landslip going on around them, that preoccupation was probably futile. It served to isolate ...”

“... a decade earlier. In New York, Peyton writes, he fell in with the Gershwins. He met Dorothy Parker and got to know Tallulah Bankhead well enough to pick up the friendship again in London. During the Blitz, in between mapping the impact of bombs, he dined at the Savoy with Alfred Hitchcock. That friendship, too, continued for a lifetime. As a lecturer at ...”

“... further south; Poland and Finland further east; the Adriatic is a stone’s throw away. Perhaps, Tony Blair calls it a ‘doorstep’ because Albanians are predominantly Muslim. The Government repeatedly refers to Serb atrocities which, George Robertson teaches us, Europe has not seen the like of ‘since the Middle Ages’. Isuppose if you overlook the ...”

“... and permits a president to pardon himself, should we understand the same rule to apply here? If Tony Blair had been charged with selling honours for cash, could he (or John Reid, or Jacqui Smith, or whoever was home secretary at the time) have procured the grant of a pardon in the name of the queen? I can’t think any British lawyer would give an ...”

“... for a boutique-hotel jolly for senior staff. The school was ‘a wonderful inspiration’, Tony Blair had said in 2006, and whatever her errors, Shuter talked to the Today programme in March with exemplary tact about her former pupil Mohammed Emwazi, who’d just been identified as ‘Jihadi John’. Shuter has the right to apply for a rethink on the ...”

“... unknown to the wider world. The tape was recorded in Minneapolis by an old friend of Dylan’s, Tony Glover, in December 1961 (a month after the recording of his first album). It’s generally known as the ‘Minneapolis Hotel’ tape, though it seems ‘hotel’ is an in-joke and the songs were recorded at the apartment of another friend, Bonnie ...”

“... sort of doubt about Cain’s wife, or the Old Testament miracles or the Consecration of Archbishop Parker ... No, it was something deeper than that. I couldn’t understand why God had made the world at all.’Catholicism explained to Waugh why the world was as evil and horrible as it was. Catholicism explained the vile bodies in it. It also explained to him ...”

“... an authentic American genius. One of the supreme alto saxophone players of all time – Charlie Parker included. A deliriously handsome lover boy in the glory days of his youth. A lifelong dope addict of truly satanic fuck-it-all grandeur. A natural writer of brazen, comic, commanding virtuosity. A proud long-term denizen of the California prison ...”

“... up against the wall and fucking well better stick together.’As with Elvis Presley and Charlie Parker, you feel Destiny’s real leg-up was provided by the ferocious will of Sinatra’s mother. Most people seem to have regarded Dolly as the real man about the house: Sinatra’s father, Marty, an easy-going ghost, barely registers in most biographies. As an ...”

“... imperative mode: ‘Be good!’ – a demand, a trap. Women like Rich and Cusk, and also Rozsika Parker and Lisa Baraitser, who lay bare the complex run of emotions to which motherhood gives rise, are issuing a political corrective, sourced in but reaching far beyond the domain of motherhood itself. The idea of maternal virtue is a myth that serves no ...”

“... in the recent RA exhibition is hard to understand. 17 January. The Prince of Wales and Mrs Parker-Bowles come to The Lady in the Van. Normally royalty is guaranteed to put a frost on an audience but their presence peps things up and it’s a very good house. This is because, unlike most royal persons, the Prince of Wales actually laughs and loudly too ...”