“... the Czech Republic, was fired from his job at the branch of the fast-food chain Pret A Manger in York Way, by St Pancras Station, in the middle of September. He had been working there for two years. A statement on Pret’s website explains that he was ‘dismissed for misconduct’, having ‘made homophobic comments to a colleague’ in December 2011. Pret ...”

“... extent of supporting ‘moderately repressive regimes’ if they happen to be allies. Accordingly, Peter Stuart reported in the Christian Science Monitor of 29 January that Congressional hearings were likely to be scheduled on the ‘terms of the hostage release agreement...treatment of the hostages...embassy security’ and – as a kind of afterthought ...”

“... did that live? Djuna Barnes was born in 1892 in a log cabin on the Hudson River in upstate New York. She was the second in a seemingly endless line of bohemian children. Her father, ‘a misunderstood artistic genius’ according to his mother Zadel, never had a job until Zadel died when he was 53. Meanwhile, he did her proud by acting out their shared ...”

“... Farah Pahlavi and Andy Warhol photographed in New York, 1977. In the mid 1970s​ , Iran started buying nudes. Some were abstract nudes, such as Willem de Kooning’s Woman III, with her yellow hair and emphatic yellow breasts and an expression that suggests some bemusement at de Kooning’s ‘melodrama of vulgarity ...”

“... public of the rightness of the British cause and the US press duly fell in with it. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal compared Mossadegh to Hitler, even though his occasionally authoritarian populism had to contend with a fractious parliament, and a growing internal opposition composed of merchants, landowners, royalists, the military and ...”

“... charge against him would also have to apply to Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the New York Times, as WikiLeaks’ US partner for the Afghan and Iraq war logs and the outlet for its diplomatic cables. As Chase Madar explains in The Passion of Bradley Manning, none of the material that Manning allegedly leaked is top secret. Out of roughly 250,000 ...”

“... After a few country weekends and acres of japes, Ferguson was installed as the Duchess of York.Along with that ‘love of fun’ admired by the tabloids, Fergie brought a few money problems and a talent for reaching beyond her grasp, though not beyond Andrew’s grasping. As a couple, they have always been too stupid to understand the vulnerability of ...”

“... ale. I fell in with his plan. I had met the International Socialists. My new chum was called Peter Sedgwick, and he didn’t really wear the aspect of the recruiter. Well-known for his edition of Victor Serge, he was soon to become better known for his clinical evisceration of the work of R.D. Laing, and for his hilariously mordant critique of Herbert ...”

“... this revisionist direction was taken in 1961 by the professional adviser to Magnusson’s series, Peter Sawyer. His The Age of the Vikings, one of the few recent studies not reissued this year, was a brilliant essay whose basic purpose was to explain the Viking explosion by arguing that there was nothing very exceptional about it. The Vikings were warrior ...”

“... of an African president, had been murdered while investigating an abortion racket. In exile in New York, in 1965, Nat Nakasa threw himself to his death. The names were spoken with reverence in the Drum office: Lewis Nkosi, Bloke Modisane, Arthur Maimane, and the photographers Bob Gosani and Peter Magubane, Winnie Mandela’s ...”

“... of the symbolism of the Mérode altarpiece, that beautiful late-medieval Flemish work now in New York. In a wing beside the Annunciation, an aged Joseph is seen in his carpenter’s workshop. It seems that he is making a mousetrap. What is the significance of that detail? Schapiro begins by explaining it in terms of the tradition of symbolism which saw ...”

“... a hard copy and went to sit down with it in Kensington Palace Gardens, close to the statue of Peter Pan and not far from the Sunken Garden and the new monument to Diana, over which her sons recently agreed a brief ceasefire. Diana was pretty but the statue is ugly, fully humanitarian but not really human. ‘You seem quite content,’ a passing tourist ...”

“... right enemies (and not find himself finessed so that he’s lined up with Sewell – or the late Peter Fuller) and stay out on the left flank; his fury is rather Victorian – Ruskin’s rage against the immoralism of the Baroque. Oddly enough, Matthew Collings – in the book of his Channel Four series – says many of the same things as Stallabrass; he ...”

“... ours and the Saids’, scampering up and down the hall when we lived in the same building in New York. The piano in the sitting-room, the sense of Brahms in the air, even when there was nothing to be heard. But this sounds a little too peaceful. Edward was a demon tennis player, and I sometimes thought he played the piano the way he played tennis: to ...”

“... nor Crusader, to dwell as she does with equal good will among modern appliances in London and New York’, he had confidently asserted in the Hugo review. While his historical dramas are happy enough in Camelot and Troy, Swinburne never really found art in modern appliances or city life. His characters have no vivid, conversational speech, his lyrics no ...”