“... play, particularly for the more realist form of film, have needed a motivation for this, from the war between Messaline and Illyria explained in an ominous voiceover in Trevor Nunn’s 1996 film, to an overriding need to play in the boys’ football team in Andy Fickman’s likeable 2006 adaptation, She’s the Man.) Whereas in The Tempest the storm has left ...”

“... de la France’ and is evidently intended as a cry of protest against the anguish and horror of war – perhaps too evidently. Where the outer movements of En blanc et noir communicate an exhilarating effortlessness, the energy of the middle movement seems blocked, as if the music were inhibited by its own high aims. A grim procession of broken and ...”

“... the moon. You feel a bit for Aldrin. Like Collins, he went to West Point – he was third in his class. Like Armstrong, he had been a noted pilot in the Korean War. He had an air of entitlement about him. But his mother, born Marion Moon, killed herself a year before he went into space and after the mission he began to ...”

“... de Grâce is the story of a ménage à trois, set in the Baltic states during the Russian Civil War: Erick, his fellow soldier Conrad and Conrad’s sister, Sophie, are thrown together by the conflict. After Erick rejects Sophie’s love, they move apart ideologically, but when Sophie is captured she asks that Erick be the one to execute her. He ...”

“... high-level ‘regime change’, as the MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec put it, by replacing the class of people who have long managed American institutions. Posobiec is something like an unofficial press secretary for the administration. When I saw him over the inauguration weekend, he told me that ‘you can’t define victory until the last day of ...”

“... Britain’s industrial decline and the sudden Middle East oil price hike after the Yom Kippur war of 1973 meant that nationalist economics no longer seemed so daft or unworldly. The energy crisis contributed to political instability at Westminster. In the indecisive general election of February 1974, the SNP took seven seats, and after the election which ...”

“... good command of English; experienced in kindergarten and domestic work, plain cooking, first-class references – Write to Lisel Braun, Arenbergring 10, Vienna III.’23 May 1938: ‘Housekeeper or Companion-Help. Austrian lady, age 40, good birth and education, seeks post: good cook, needlewoman, fluent English, French; pianist; willing to care for ...”

“... divine attributes and intentions (‘consider the lilies of the field, how they grow’); middle-class and aristocratic ladies for whom it was a desirable feminine ‘accomplishment’. Then there were the globally distributed worthies who wanted the richness and particularities of their local flora to be formally acknowledged, and who sought personal ...”

“... that ‘there is in England, as in other countries, a fascist world: the world of lower-middle-class conservatives who have no intelligence but a deep belief in violence as a sign of self-importance,’ and who, moreover, ‘hate foreigners, especially if they come from “inferior” races’. The sociological precision of the snobbish anathema is unique ...”

“... that these people must now eat for us?” So he fell back into talking about the 1970s war against Ian Smith. This meant nothing at all to young people and it addressed none of today’s problems.’ Second, in past elections Zanu-PF had distributed food and seeds to those with a Zanu-PF card: if you didn’t vote Zanu-PF you didn’t eat. ‘But ...”

“... to remind the public that he had been Khomeini’s prime minister in the ‘heroic days’ of war and revolution. Besides his reputation as a competent administrator, he had nationalised a host of industries, launched a rural construction programme, drafted a progressive labour law, advocated land reform, and introduced wartime price controls and ...”

“... you look like a clown or give you heavy metal poisoning. Even so, at the start of the First World War, the market for ‘commercial colour cosmetics’ (i.e. make-up) remained ‘small compared to that for skin creams’ – in large part because ‘face paint’ was associated with ‘prostitutes or, at best, actresses’. Yet by the time the Second World ...”

“... the wild grotesque of Carl Hiaasen. There’s nothing mythical about its depiction of lower-middle-class American life. The crimes are committed either for prosaic reasons – life insurance features prominently – or they are motiveless and shocking acts of violence: an 18-month-old baby is killed after being accidentally kidnapped during a routine car ...”

“... and Gérald Darmanin as minister of public action and accounts. His most prominent spoil of war on the left was the PS’s Gérard Collomb, who accepted the ministry of the interior (a difficult job, which carries responsibility for the treatment of migrants and refugees). Other important posts were offered to people who had made their names in the ...”

“... and it is getting worse. Massey and Denton found its racial segregation particularly resistant to class advancement – even when black people earned more money it made relatively little difference to the degree of segregation they experienced. The idea that blacks could improve their circumstances by working hard at school, going to college and getting a ...”