“... attempt to understand, control and make money from risk. The best version of this story is told in Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods (1998), a fascinating account of risk, which makes the point that the study of risk is a humanist project, an attempt to abolish the idea of unknowable fate and replace it with the rational, quantifiable study of chance. The ...”

“... the fabled French actress sounds like Minnie Mouse on speed. She gabbles her way through ‘Oui, Prince, je brûle pour Thésée’ at a mad, cartoonish pace, ’r’s unrolling wildly in every direction. (Watch your head!) The reviewer dotes on her deranged-chipmunk tones, and has even been known to mimic them – along with accompanying pops and blops and ...”

“... canny, entertaining book Surf’s Up – a summa theologica of Beach Boy lore and legend – Peter Doggett sums it up: ‘As ever with Brian and the past … the details altered sharply in each new telling.’ Sometimes during the course of the same interview. As if this or that reminiscence were simply one more of the musical ‘feels’ he said flowed ...”

“... nothing to his poem on Beethoven; more of Ivanov’s hallucinations. Did I know what had become of Prince Mirsky? ‘They drowned him in Kolyma. Yes, drowned. Boatloads of prisoners were simply sunk.’ The poem that began ‘Odna zvezda’ in Struve’s edition of her collected works was by someone else. Could no one any longer recognise the grammatical sign ...”

“... interests and a sober assessment of the threats to them. Force, a counsellor might say to his prince, is a tool a leader may use in response to those threats, but he should use it prudently and without emotion. Just as he should not trouble himself with questions of human rights or international law – though analysts might add these to a leader’s ...”

“... considerations.Which makes Woodward less journalist and more ambassador or courtier, more like Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, royal diplomat, gossip, host, March Hare, who pops up throughout his trilogy on the Bush administration’s wars, of which this is the third volume.* Woodward is not only granted audiences: he interviews Donald Rumsfeld, and ...”

“... was the most fashionable of environmental causes. There were international petitions and boycotts; Prince Charles and Al Gore were outspoken in their support. The campaign pivoted around the figure of Manser, the ‘Wild Man of Borneo’ or ‘Swiss Tarzan’, whose life possessed a Conradian glamour rarely glimpsed in an age of jet travel and media ...”

“... of his rage at intrusions into his privacy, and one remembers him forcing the withdrawal of John Peter’s article from Essays in Criticism because it suggested a homosexual element in his relationship with Jean Verdenal. Lyndall Gordon reports a conversation with Mary Trevelyan which makes him seem mildly amused about this imputation, but his first reaction ...”

“... as an ironic shorthand for the futility and mendacity of US policy. Eventually the filmmaker Peter Davis used the phrase as the title for his 1974 documentary which exposed the American invaders’ casual brutality and indifference towards Asian lives. Clinton was involved, however tangentially, in the antiwar counterculture. Yet, like everyone else in ...”

“... had rescued Mike Nichols from a man with a fierce dog in New York. He had fought physically with Peter O’Toole, using a broken bottle. He had got the overflow from his lavatory to pour a jet of water onto the head of a woman who was making her car hoot in the street below. Often it would be nothing more than an ugly exchange at a drinking party for which ...”

“... be victims. When he creates rogues and scoundrels, they hit the jackpot. No wonder: for Satan is a Prince in this world and Augustine taught us that man should not put his faith in governments, soldiers or judges. He should welcome calamity as a reminder to keep his eyes fixed on the Eternal City of God. ‘Opt out’ is the moral. ‘These ...”

“... London delivering letters this cold wet May afternoon. 5 June. My lunch owes a good deal to the Prince of Wales, whose beetroot soup I have and then his raspberry jam in my Yeo Valley yogurt. Jam and soup are both delicious, and in the middle of the yogurt I remember for no obvious reason the film State Fair and in particular the scatty mother. Decide she ...”

“... to ways of dealing with Britain’s rubbish. ‘Everything is checked,’ she says. Her colleague Peter Robinson chips in. ‘The whole area of waste handling and management is so much more technically sound in the UK than it ever was before.’ He smiles. ‘This country’s history of landfill has actually been quite safe; it has served us well.’ On the ...”

“... Neal Ascherson, Ilya Budraitskis, James Butler, Andrew Cockburn, Meehan Crist, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Peter Geoghegan, Jeremy Harding, Owen Hatherley, Abby Innes, Mimi Jiang, Thomas Jones, Laleh Khalili, Jackson Lears, Donald MacKenzie, Thomas Meaney, James Meek, Pankaj Mishra, Azadeh Moaveni, Jan-Werner Müller, Vadim Nikitin, Jacqueline Rose, Jeremy ...”

“... my toughest competitor – if not in content, only in style?’ he asked. ‘Prince Charles,’ he answered. ‘I’m thinking of becoming an entertainer,’ he also said. ‘Liza Minnelli gets $75,000 a night to sing, and I’m really curious as to how I would do.’ ‘Yes,’ Andersen wrote, ‘in the blockbuster 1999: Casinos of the ...”