“... banal information she purveys, and Sandy would not have had such a finely calibrated ear if the young Humphries had not first embraced the culture of far-off Europe in its most refined, preferably decadent forms. When Humphries writes in propria persona his prose can scarcely contain its freight of cultivated allusions. He writes the most nutritiously ...”

“... in her poetry: it is her craftsmanship that is paid the sincerest compliment in the words of the young poet today. The drama she made of herself goes into the museum of legend, the vivid fictions live on. Alvarez himself rightly forecast the ‘new areas of experience’ which would result from poetry exploring its own sorts of fiction in its own ways. But ...”

“... married in 1915. Moses brought the same erotic energy to civil service reform. He was one of those young men whose pulse could be set racing by a new system of classifying government jobs. He embarked on a huge reclassification project, drawing up a detailed plan for making promotions on a grading system based on merit – a move calculated to outrage the ...”

“... Vogue editor Alexander Liberman, and Hess and Rosenberg were soon to convert, to be followed by young critic-curators like Sam Hunter and Lawrence Alloway. Just as important, Newman finally had patrons such as Ben Heller. ‘Ultimately,’ Amy Newman writes, ‘he entered and navigated [the art world] with more success and finesse than any of his former ...”

“... later, ‘and I felt they needed broadening.’ The influence of this American pacifist on the young prince was regarded resentfully by right-wing intellectuals; one of them would later complain that Akihito had contracted a spiritual and intellectual ‘fungus’ from his tutor.His father, Hirohito, was never an active war commander or strategist, but ...”

“... Labour’s Minister of Education, told the Association of Education Committees in 1968, ‘for young people to know the facts about Vietnam than it is to know all the details of the Wars of the Roses.’ These modernising tendencies were very much to the fore in CSE, the school-leaving examination introduced in 1964 with the aim of giving every ...”

“... wake the American Left (a summons answered in the enthusiastic endorsements of, for example, John Kenneth Galbraith, the reporter Neil Sheehan and the historian Sean Wilentz). The antagonist he explicitly argues with most often is his fellow philo-American of British origins, Paul Johnson (once on the Left, then Thatcherite, now an admirer of Tony ...”

“... in the language of advertising, her professional world: Imagine taking home this beautiful young pale-skinned blackhaired late-model Jewess. Into fitness, healthy living. Raised good in better Yonkers. Mother a Hebrew School teacher, which means for her a traditional education. Father a chief risk officer for an energy provider in the ...”

“... zone in the country that would attract $800 million of investment. Zambia’s former president, Kenneth Kaunda, received him personally, and the Chinese president delivered his usual speech: ‘China is happy to have Zambia as a good friend, good partner, and a good brother.’ Two years earlier, around fifty Zambians were killed in an accident at an ...”

“... shut down as a hoax eight days later, with bidding at $5.7 million. In July 1999, bidding for a ‘young man’s virginity’ reached $10 million before it was pulled. Shipments of cocaine, votes and souls have also often been listed. In 2001, the artist Keith Obadike put his blackness up for sale (the description is reproduced in Everyday eBay): ‘This ...”

“... definition predicated on rupture. Against this orthodoxy several scholars – the art historians Kenneth Silver and Romi Golan, for example – have recently argued that, on the contrary, French art in the Twenties and Thirties was far more conservative than Modernist. Winter writes in this revisionist tradition but attacks on a broader front. He has devoted ...”

“... getting the clap,’ he remembered. In descriptions by himself and others, he emerges as a feral young fellow who did not let much bother him. But there are interesting moments when he takes a moral position; for example, when Dylan Thomas, who annoyed him by making assumptions about his relationship with Spender, irritated him further by boasting how well ...”

“... psychology of types – was an interest in form. The composer Michael Friedman, who died much too young last year, left a list of column topics which included the thought that ‘I seriously think Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the great modernist novel.’ It is possible to have an argument over the exact delineation of the term ‘modernist’ there, since ...”

“... pseudonymous character was first aired in an interview with Rolling Stone’s bumptious but canny young reporter Cameron Crowe; it soon became notorious. Crowe’s scene-setting picture of Bowie at home featured black candles and doodled ballpoint stars meant to ward off evil influences. Bowie revealed an enthusiasm for Aleister Crowley’s system of ...”

“... Reward. Stories of personal and corporate triumph abound, but narrative is put to other uses too. Kenneth Blanchard’s best-selling ‘One Minute Manager’ series combines the barely worded zen fable with the idiom of the children’s story. Other books use narrative to bring large-scale history back into the depleted scene. Robert Lacey’s Ford traces the ...”