“... New Nations, organised by the Parsons-derived sociologist Edward Shils and the political scientist David Apter. Geertz quotes from Shils’s amusingly unself-conscious, Cold War-imperial foundational essay: The categories we employ are the same as the ones we employ in our studies of our own societies, and they postulate the fundamental affinities of all ...”

“... remained ‘intrinsically … boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that’s what makes it so boring.’The child can also wreak reciprocal havoc on the bewildering world, as happens in one of Gorey’s earliest books, The Doubtful Guest (1957), a story told in monochrome ...”

“... removal of ruins and the burning of ancient marbles for lime. Other popes followed his example. As David Karmon showed some time ago, the movement to conserve ancient sites in their current state was born in the same years when antiquarians worried that Rome was consuming its own substance to fuel its revival.Susan Stewart’s The Ruins Lesson tells the story ...”

“... for that project, Herzog stands beside Chatwin’s leather rucksack, the gift of a dying man. In May 2018, a group of 48 filmmakers were invited to join Herzog at a workshop where they would ‘submerge into the density and mystery of the Peruvian Amazonian jungle’. They would travel ‘exclusively in motorboat’. Jungle tourism caters for all tastes, as ...”

“... also noted that ‘this objective is not formally stated in public documents.’) In May 2003, Jonathan Eyal, now associate director at RUSI, complained that ‘persuading international public opinion that a military action against Iraq was necessary should have been easy.’ But for some reason, even within the Anglosphere large numbers of ...”

“... hydrangea); and his need for his unconscious to have its way involves an ambivalence about what it may bring home (the dreams about his dog – restitution, or nightmare?). Ammons was raised in a house that had hardly any books. All he could remember reading were the first 11 pages of Robinson Crusoe – the rest of the book had disappeared. That memory is ...”

“... out of a party.Great reporting isn’t usually harmed by the reporter having a poor character. It may even be improved by it. Lillian just happened to be hard-bitten in the right way. Her pieces relied on a ruthlessness, sometimes a viciousness, that she didn’t try to hide and that other people liked to comment on. She talked a lot about not being ...”

“... wave of militancy among agricultural workers erupted into a harvest-time strike at Rudston Farm. David Holtby could afford the wage increases: it was the Saturday half-day that he couldn’t stomach. Baffled and defeated, he threw in his hand and sold the farm. Winifred came back from the war to find her parents living in wealthy suburban Cottingham, on the ...”

“... adopted it in a decorous shape for his longest and most ambitious work, The Moralists. David Hume, whom Diderot befriended in Paris in the 1760s, used it to scandalously sceptical effect in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, unpublishable until after his death. Diderot’s most famous work is a dialogue: Rameau’s Nephew, in which a ...”

“... to dismiss their notions as primitive, irrational or bizarre, you should reflect that the fault may lie not in them but in you. The chances are that the problems that bothered them were nothing like the ones that strike you as obvious or inevitable, and that they were offering sensible answers to their own questions rather than foolish answers to ...”

“... Anglicans went, so did their prayer book. A heroic work of chronological listings published by David Griffiths in 2002 rounded up about 4800 editions of the Prayer Book or of liturgies stemming from its Scottish and American derivatives; around 1200 of these are in 199 other languages, ranging from the Acholi of Uganda to Zulu. Griffiths demonstrated that ...”

“... the buildings looking out onto the boardwalk and the ocean. I went to see him there. The building may once have been prestigious but now Volodya’s apartment was at the end of a long, black, mouldy corridor smelling of stewed cabbage. His walls were yellow with cigarette smoke, the main room empty apart from a huge plasma TV. He lives alone. A wardrobe ran ...”

“... Hemingway marathon, to the fling with James Gavin (hero of the 82nd Airborne), to the affair with David Gurewitsch in Cuernavaca, even the marriage to Tom Matthews in 1954 that made her so ‘plain silly happy’ at first: You see, I have chalked it up too well, and see where and how I am caught – and how tightly. Through ignorance, carelessness, pride and ...”

“... little time for preparation as possible. In the event he was arrested on a Saturday afternoon in May for trial the following Monday. In the Court of King’s Bench, the attorney-general read out the charge contained in the information. Hone asked for a copy of the charges against him, but was refused one unless he was willing to pay to have the information ...”

“... not only needing applause, but needing (badly needing) other people to have a little less of it. David Frost once asked him what he wished he’d known at 20. ‘To hold my tongue,’ Gielgud said. ‘I’ve talked too much, gossiped too much.’ The fear of gossip can run a life, and sometimes ruin one; Michael Redgrave was an actor powered by ...”