“... Roger Williamson was burned to death at Zandvoort in 1973, while his friend and fellow driver David Purley tried desperately to beat out the flames as millions of TV viewers watched, Lauda was asked by the press why he hadn’t stopped to help. ‘I’m paid to race,’ he said, ‘not to stop.’ The ‘formula’ of F1 refers to the various rules ...”

“... functional harmony’. Hooked up to machines, he clings to every instance of the human: the nurse wearing pins that indicate she’s queer (‘everyone else had seemed so relentlessly heterosexual’); the orderly who gently strokes his ankle. His favourite nurse is named Alivia, the Spanish word for ‘relief’. He is at once special – ‘an ER doctor’s ...”

“... districts are official no-go areas. The place is crawling with US Special Forces – out hunting. Wearing no insignia and costumes of mismatched camouflage, Afghan scarves, beards and assorted bush hats, the special ops units look both sinister and absurd as their convoys of Humvees lurch past on the dusty tracks. The top drug lord here is Hazrat ...”

“... There seems to be an endless supply of suicide bombers, driving trucks packed with explosives or wearing explosive belts. The US insists that the campaign is being carried out by foreigners, but logistics, safe houses and intelligence must be arranged by Iraqis, because non-Iraqi Arabs would be too visible to remain concealed for long. Not all the US ...”

“... rusting in the weeds, but a few days later we read that the car that belonged to their leader, David Koresh, has been auctioned for $37,500. No word on who gets those big bucks. In the university town of Austin, Texas we begin to see bumper stickers again. They flaunt their hipness: ‘Keep Austin Weird’ is a motto you see on T-shirts and bags, and ...”

“... the full complement of four people nearly everywhere. It was a woman, probably in her thirties, wearing dyed blonde hair and a navy blue adidas track suit. She retrieved the belt from under the mattress where she had hidden it, and asked how much money I would give for its return. It soon became evident that she expected the lot. ‘After all,’ she said ...”

“... no longer on the Mail website. I did manage to find a photograph of Abrahams in Baku in the 1990s, wearing dark glasses and holding an AK-47.The question of whether or not BP smoothed Aliyev’s ascent to power is ‘a bit of a red herring’, says James Marriott of the campaign organisation Platform, co-author with Mika Minio-Paluello of The Oil Road ...”

“... and the years that followed; specific gravestones seemed to have been targeted.A volunteer called David Ramírez López found a pistol bullet in the grave. He held it up for the others to see. The lead had been flattened by impact into a squat, pluglike shape and the decomposition of organic matter around it had made it look waxy, as if coated in candle ...”

“... that any infraction they commit will expose their families to danger. There are no bandana-wearing revolutionary heroes in The Queue, and no cartoon baddies either. Abdel Aziz explores the ephemera of mundane bureaucratic viciousness – official reports, state television announcements, the grammar of the regime’s self-image – alongside the worlds ...”

“... at it, into beautiful parts: a pair of pigeon wings (enlarged), a nude boy studied from the rear wearing the same, a violin, a bearded male model holding sheet music, a sleeping housemaid (sitting in for the Virgin), a flask, assorted pebbles, a donkey’s head. Neither the Fortune Teller nor the Cardsharps reminds us of the studio, but there are later ...”

“... return, his uncle commissioned two fine portraits. The American expat Benjamin West painted him wearing a splendid Māori flax cloak, standing among a striking assortment of South Sea trophies, and his friend Joshua Reynolds underlined the point by posing the romantically unwigged young Banks with a globe and a seascape in the distant background. His left ...”

“... making a fuss about, it’s argued, it’s not sexual assault, but Harman’s book makes clear how wearing and dispiriting it is to spend decades in a male-dominated environment where male primacy is continually and aggressively reasserted. ‘The law,’ she writes, ‘is now there to protect women’ – sexual harassment in the workplace is classed as a ...”

“... cross-dressing was a political act in a different sense, a campaign to confront oppressive norms: wearing drag in the street was part of that programme. Ira Siff and Keith Jurosko had a more straitened notion of theatrical display. As Keith explained at the Traverse that day, he had only once ventured into the outside world in drag, and that was in ...”

“... of a solution, by fleshing out the original makers of the myth – Joe and Rose Kennedy. David Nasaw’s The Patriarch is a comprehensive account of Joseph Kennedy’s ascent from lace-curtain respectability to extraordinary wealth and political influence, followed by exile to the margins and vicarious achievement through his sons. Nasaw shows that ...”

“... to dispose of their dog, for no particular reason except to ‘simplify their life’. The boy, David, of kindergarten age, can hardly share this hope but makes no plea in the animal’s favour: ‘The dog has crammed itself behind the pipes beneath the kitchen sink. David squats before him, blowing gently on his ...”