“... he up and he jumped in the water-hole, Drowning himself by the coolibah tree, And his ghost may be heard as it sings by the billabong, Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me? ‘Waltzing Matilda’, A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson (1895) Three weeks before the American presidential vote, the political right was victorious in the Australian federal ...”

“... were cordoned off in separate, inferior waiting rooms in bus terminals and train stations. On 4 May, a group of 18 activists, black and white, men and women, all members of CORE, ventured south from Washington, heading to New Orleans. Their journey, dubbed the ‘Freedom Ride’, took them through the upper South, where their affront to Jim Crow was mostly ...”

“... right-wing populist party, the LPF (List Pim Fortuyn), formed in the lead-up to the elections of May 2002, which went on to win 17 per cent of the vote and 26 seats in parliament – the most successful debut of any new party in postwar Dutch history. Fortuyn himself had been murdered by an animal rights activist a week before polling, and since little was ...”

“... du monde on dit “presser des questions”, en français on dit “torture”.’ Atrocities may have been widely discussed among left-wing intellectuals, but knowledge of them was not confined to habitués of the Deux Magots. Jean Lartéguy’s popular novels about the Parachute Regiment, which could be picked up at any station bookstall, were quite ...”

“... as Titian proved, accurate drawing and minute detail are not a sure way to naturalness, and may even preclude the transition from seeing patches of paint to having an impression of a living face. Compare Holbein’s portraits – true, I am willing to guess, in contour and complete to every whisker of stubble – with Titian’s most persuasive ones, or ...”

“... circuit of production and consumption, without much running-room for anything else. Some may object that the world of total design is not new: that the conflation of the aesthetic and the utilitarian in the commercial goes back to the design programme of the Bauhaus in the 1920s – and they would be right. If the first Industrial Revolution prepared ...”

“... person) as ‘indefinable … which he believes in a lively manner gives him ideas of whatever may be going forward externally’ – promoted in him ‘an almost irresistible inclination to visit different parts of his native country, in quest of knowledge or amusement’. At 26 he was not ready to pray away the rest of his life, to say nothing of ...”

“... with those of Queens or the Bronx) and hence its unequal distribution of resources. Manhattan may well be the world’s great cultural centre, yet few of the artists and intellectuals whose work animates it can afford to live there, and Bender says little about the effects of that. New Yorkers in search of cultural innovation are more likely to find it in ...”

“... about God and the world; hence he adopts an attitude to authority which is bifold – authorities may tell us truths which we cannot ourselves apprehend, or they may hoodwink us with nonsense. Therefore on some points authorities must be trusted even if one experiences their absurdity; on others they might be compared with ...”

“... and no wonder – while men postpone commitment, her eggs are already scrambling. The young mother may be advised to give up work till her children are older or she may be urged to fight for government policies and workplace changes that would enable her more easily to combine both roles. But basically the books all give the ...”

“... to be more resilient than the old. Of others with an interest in the matter, the Foreign Office may not be alone in believing that we have nothing at all to learn from such countries. Notwithstanding his compliment to Lukashenko, Chávez might say he has little to learn from us. Simón Bolívar, the hero of the liberation of several South American ...”

“... loss, riches, invention, triumph – all justified and interesting avenues. But texts may suggest something else: agreement, for example, or honourable hard work. In Proust’s case, when the topic is memory and chance, the convergences are remarkable. The original text says, ‘Il y a beaucoup de hasard en tout ceci,’ and we get to read, in the ...”

“... but we know she’s in the Women’s Psychopathic Ward and that there’s a baby, who may or may not have died – probably not, because Marthe’s husband, Christopher, brings her a little twist of baby hair. Everything comes to Marthe not through her understanding but through the unmediated chaos of her ...”

“... loud? Perhaps you only thought you did. One person who is under no illusion about comedy – who may never have found it funny in the first place – is the comic. We all know the old joke about the man who goes to the doctor, depressed, and is told to see the famous clown Pagliacci perform: no cure better than laughter. ‘But doctor,’ the man says, ‘I ...”

“... temperamental difficulties.’ ‘If only Mr Earnest Waller could see me now!’ To the reader it may seem that Mr Waller was doing his best but somewhere in Parr the aggrieved teenager lives on. He is so obviously not lazy or inattentive that it is surprising he still minds. His success comes from exactly the opposite qualities. Precise attention, often to ...”