“... the spine of popular standards, vaulting off into a far more rarefied harmonic atmosphere.) Jazz may have been born and raised in brothels, gin joints, chthonic nightclubs, rather than respectable performance spaces, but it was a music of devilish complexity, exacting technical fibre. Musicians in touring jazz bands and orchestras had to satisfy the clamour ...”

“... why did Bush embrace a lopsided militarising of America’s response to 11 September? Mann may have identified the most important reason. Dazzled by the US’s unquestioned military supremacy, the civilian hawks seem to have lost all realistic appreciation of what the military can and cannot do. The man with a hammer misinterprets every problem as a ...”

“... hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. Israel has established control of Iran’s skies and may send its fighter planes and drones there again, as it routinely does over Lebanon and Syria. All this could have been avoided. Ten years ago, the UN Security Council, the EU and Iran reached an agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ...”

“... leaving room for such reflective afterthoughts as might serve to indicate the dangers involved. We may recall, in this connection, his diagnostic reading of Heidegger’s commentaries on Hölderlin, especially his point that Heidegger misinterprets – indeed ‘violates’ – his texts exactly in so far as he wants them to state what can only be shadowed ...”

“... 27 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the first quarter of 1996 A coherent South African identity may be a mirage, visible in the post-match celebrations of the rugby World Cup and other moments of transcendental euphoria, but not really a part of the fabric of everyday life. If there are still significant differences between black Americans, Italian ...”

“... to the status of toiletry product. Then Keir holds him in place, to insist on the grooming that may edge this oddity into acceptability as a decoy. ‘It meant nothing to Keir, but Shuggie felt like the back of his eyeballs were sweating.’Keir provides the finishing touch to this minimalist makeover by chewing some gum then passing it on:Reluctantly ...”

“... has dispatched them.’) In Munich, Red Terror was followed by White Terror, which was worse. By May, it was all over. Many thousands of people were dead, and political life in Munich became what it was to remain for the remainder of the Weimar years, a running sore for the new Republic. Eisner had hoped to create in Bavaria a beacon for a new kind of ...”

“... funds. ‘It’s a long time since I saw a picture I wanted so much,’ he wrote to McGreevy. In May 1936 he told McGreevy that Yeats had ‘brought up the subject of the picture … I since borrowed £10 which he accepted as a first instalment, the remaining £20 to follow God knows when, & have now got the picture. Mother & Frank [Beckett’s ...”

“... of literary art, when functioning successfully as such, have any intimate engagement with what may be called knowledge?’ – our reasons for asking it are different, and so is our idea of what might constitute an interesting answer. Walsh thought that the disengagement of literature from direct knowledge claims might ‘be seen as the liberation of ...”

“... range of reference, forcefully written and fairly eccentric, at times indeed slightly unhinged. It may well make him rich and famous, in the manner of Allan Bloom, Samuel Huntingdon and other purveyors of the slightly unhinged academic diagnostic blockbuster. But the arguments he musters and the warnings he issues are curiously similar to those that have been ...”

“... Lynching Memorial.* And German reparations over the past half-century are a model – precedent may be a better word – for Neiman and many others who argue in favour of some form of reparations for slavery. They seem to demonstrate moral principle in action at a national level. Dressed in its memorial trappings, Berlin today is the Nazi capital in ...”

“... harbour. Tears of joy? Relief? Despair? The book he is reportedly writing in his French retreat may tell us; meanwhile we can only guess. The peaceful transfer of Hong Kong’s sovereignty from Britain to China – all things considered, the unlikeliest end any empire ever had – went off without a visible hitch. Almost every day of his five-year ...”

“... now, not during this period of mourning. I formed the impression while I was in Egypt that Dodi may have been a little backward – ‘simple’ was a word I heard quite often used – and that he conformed to some familiar image of the feckless first-born son of a rich father. Mohamed would always have bankrolled him, people said, if only in order to ...”

“... result: self-censorship. We stay out of trouble by gagging ourselves. Among the few motives that may strengthen the power of resistance is the consciousness of having been deeply wrong oneself, either regarding some abstract question or in personal or public life. Another motive of resistance occasionally pitches in: a radical, quasi-physical horror of ...”

“... churchyards, churches, crypts, cemeteries, derelict houses. They worship within a circle which may be drawn or marked on the ground or made with string or twine. Their rites include prayers and chants to Satan, but they also carry out ‘child sexual and physical abuse, smearing and consumption of body substances (blood, faeces, semen and urine) and sexual ...”