“... the stage, a Pomeranian, and another, a Pekingese, and myself. We also had a parlourmaid who was black, which was a rarity in those days, and she was called – to her face, I believe – ‘Black Mary’. It was not till some two or three years after we moved that my father found it necessary to have a chauffeur, and then ...”

“... the jurisdiction of the state from which the first mid-level culprit to be caught, the doleiro (black market money-changer) Alberto Youssef, hailed: the atypically middle-class provincial society of Paraná, in the south of Brazil. Moro, a native son who had cut his teeth as an assistant in the mensalão trial, was the presiding judge in its capital ...”

“... The difference is very clear if we compare him with the great theorist of modern polytheism, Max Weber. In Weber, the gods that have risen from their graves in a disenchanted world are truly warring – there is no common standard of value, no conceivable truce, among them, any more than in the world of the great powers. The hope of a eudaimonist ...”

“... SNP’s open-door citizenship policy which would, for example, allow the illegitimate offspring of black American GIs stationed in Scotland to be as Scottish as ... well, Sir Nicholas himself. Vote Tory to preserve the Scot-Brit race. This eccentric addendum to the Unionist creed was not openly endorsed by Fairbairn’s successor as Tory candidate, a generally ...”

“... political fringes in the West, refused to believe the rape allegations. The Grayzone journalists Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté tweeted about ‘fabricated atrocity tales’ and accused the Patten report of ‘laundering’ the ‘Hamas mass rape hoax’. Their denialism galvanised Israel’s defenders. The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said that he ...”

“... carparks at Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle are filled with sleek creations, art-directed to the max by Mercedes and Renault to convey futurity, Concorde still looks as if a crack has opened in the fabric of the Universe and a message from tomorrow has been poked through. Age has, however, made it clear that the tomorrow in question is yesterday’s ...”

“... to escape their origins altogether. Mitteleuropa was a German invention, famously theorised by Max Weber’s friend Friedrich Naumann during the first World War. Naumann’s conception remains arrestingly topical. The Central Europe he envisaged was to be organised around a Germanic nucleus, combining Prussian industrial efficiency and Austrian cultural ...”

“... literature to the visual arts. Taking its title from Shakespeare, and its imagery from Tiepolo and Max Ernst, Conquering Peace focuses on the successive attempts to exorcise war in Europe from the 18th century to the present, a theme it develops with unfailing grace, verve and lucidity. For Ghervas, the peace settlements which ended each great outbreak of ...”

“... the way human life could find rebirth and transformation, 2001 was a natural successor to the black and white projection of the way this world would end. Dr Strangelove was still showing in second-run theatres soon after I learned about the effects just one hydrogen bomb would have, but what struck me then was not the political warning so much as the ...”

“... front line moves further away, without quite disappearing. He quotes the Kyiv-born Russian poet Max Voloshin’s description of Paris in 1915:Before the Battle of the Marne it saw streams of refugees and hundreds of thousands of soldiers pass through, didn’t sleep for several nights in anticipation of the hoofbeats of the German cavalry, then settled down ...”

“... question the Almighty.’ And, uncategorisably, 2009’s Burning Man Festival, in the vast Black Rock Desert of Nevada, featured the theme of ‘Evolution’: the 12-metre human shape – burned to extinction at festival’s end – roseabove a ‘tangled bank’ consisting of irregular wooden triangles … At night the tangled bank came alive with ...”

“... it was a remarkably handsome newspaper, much more spacious in its page layouts and crisper in its black/white contrasts than its rival, the Sunday Times, which looked untidy and grey by comparison. Throughout the 1950s it was the dominant ‘quality’ Sunday paper, certainly in its cultural and political influence among the young if not always in terms of ...”

“... cursor passed across the screen and clicked silently on the tallest column, which turned red and black and presently vanished. This is how we delete you. The cursor returned and clicked on the second column. Presently a thing like a solid grey-white cauliflower rose until it was a mountain covering all south Manhattan. This is how we bury you. It was the ...”

“... with Menderes’s, Demirel’s brand of populism ended in larger deficits, higher inflation, wider black markets and lower growth. Deteriorating economic conditions were compounded by increasing civil violence, as the far right stepped up its campaign against the left, and a medley of revolutionary groups hit back. Worst affected were Alevis – communities ...”

“... means of provoking desire in men’. In what sounds like a fairly silly short story by her friend Max Ewing, she goes by the Firbankian name of Miss Boadicea Hangover, an ‘appallingly erudite heiress … [who] declaimed excitedly, her voice resounding … On and on she went, Meditation after Expostulation, her memory never failing.’ Rather more ...”