“... we need to travel to the Pacific Ocean. In Micronesia, about 1800 miles north of the eastern corner of Australia, there’s a group of islands called Yap. It has a population of 11,000 and is largely unvisited except by divers, but it’s a very popular place with economists talking about the nature of money, starting with a fascinating paper by Milton ...”

“... were funny. When Stuart began to talk to Fintan O’Toole about his friendship with the poet Paul Potts, and his admiration for him, Fintan thought he was talking about the dictator Pol Pot. He began to imagine Stuart in Paris befriending the future mass murderer and now, after all the years, talking casually and fondly of him. Some of the stories were ...”

“... to great thinkers of the African diaspora, W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon, for example, Paul Gilroy.But Rose was also interested in what Hegel, following the novel-within-a-novel in Wilhelm Meister, called the ‘beautiful soul’. Goethe tells of a young woman’s withdrawal from the outer world, which expects her to fulfil her duties as a wife and ...”

“... Faÿ at once to one’s mental rogues’ gallery of wayward wartime college profs: Heidegger and Paul de Man seem like milquetoasts in comparison.And, however enigmatically, the findings do appear to compromise Stein and Toklas. (Burns thinks the couple knew little if anything about Faÿ’s Nazi ties; Malcolm seems undecided.) Though neither Stein nor ...”

“... a protest about them selling Israeli goods and Chris has been sort of fighting this pro-Palestine corner for years so that’s how we got talking.’ He would have been very much at home in the old Labour Party, she said.I asked if I could meet him, and we got in a taxi. Osborne, a gentle, silver-haired man in a baggy black T-shirt, runs a tattoo parlour he ...”

“... ills.Could the left have defended a Lexit? The idea was floated by journalists like Owen Jones and Paul Mason in the early days of the campaign. Both quickly retreated when they realised that the mainstream left had nothing positive to say to its constituencies. They felt that supporting Brexit in the context of a campaign dominated by nationalists, bigots and ...”

“... spoke critically of the film-makers who had expressed interest in him. He was happy to dismiss Paul Greengrass, Alex Gibney or Steven Spielberg with a flick of the tongue. The three of us went to a very pink café in the town and ordered sandwiches and cakes. We sat outside, and Julian got distracted by some young girls walking past. ‘Hold on,’ he ...”