“... Even those of us who don’t know Malcolm Muggeridge personally can be certain that the charm to which his friends attest would quickly enslave us too, should we be exposed to it. One would probably soon give up quarrelling with him. But his public persona invites quarrel and not much else ...”

“... to bring this up since Other People depends very largely on a trick which is usually thought to be someone else’s trademark. First, to describe the novel. The narrative follows a heroine who has woken in hospital (‘a white room’) lacking all long- and short-term memory. The amnesiac gimmick is common enough in SF and thriller fiction (Other People is ...”

“... to the bombing of Dresden. The scale of the killing, extraordinary as it is, has been exceeded by the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure. The war has required the mobilisation of at least 360,000 reserves: 4 per cent of Israel’s population. From the political and military hierarchy down to individual platoons, the nature of the operations ...”

“... the prep school as the damp, dark, dry-rotted basement of myself: somehow foundational but not to be visited without protective gear.In 2010, as my children chatted in the car on the way back from the playground, I made a note to look up the story when I got home. Instead, I forgot, and it wasn’t until the next day that I read about it. The photographs were ...”

“... for fifteen years against Napoleon, and, at the end of the period, against rising German power. By any historical standard, as great powers they had very few clashing interests. Though both wanted to expand, they could do so for many thousands of miles across Asia without interfering with each other. The implication that Britain and Russia have always been ...”

“... changes in my brain I find shapes fall apart on me. My responsibility to forms can’t be gracefully fulfilled. Nonetheless, I offer the following in the hope it does not strike you as dishevelled or depressing.To right away avoid being depressing, and because beginnings are important, I’ll begin with a poem ...”

“... can become more moderate when in power. Both views are misleading. While Meloni has proved to be shrewd on the national and the international stage, she is also operating in a country where the normalisation of the far right has been advancing for decades. Italy after the Second World War had a unique political landscape. It was home to both the most ...”

“... but Witbooi turned down all German offers of protection, insisting that local peoples should be allowed to deal with their own problems. When in 1886 he was approached by German emissaries sent by the colonial administrator, Heinrich Göring, he refused to negotiate with anyone but ...”

“... his conscience clean while others did the dirty work: it required determined resistance to war by means of direct action. Pacifism – as well as poetry – led him to Herbert Read, Britain’s most famous anarchist, and he absorbed many of Read’s ideas. The state became the primary target of his political critique. Drawing on psychoanalysis, he argued ...”

“... is the preferred Australian word for denunciation or snitching to the bosses, and it is taken to be a shameful betrayal of one’s fellow subalterns. I’m quite sure that, as a child, I never sneaked to a teacher about other girls: that would have been contemptible in schoolyard culture and I would remember if I’d done such a thing. For adults, it’s ...”

“... Indian civilisation that flourished from about 3300 to 1700 bce.To start with, the book seems to be a subtle culture-clash comedy. Satnam decides to stay on the farm while his parents return to London. This also allows him to avoid conflict with the London girlfriend he has dumped in a fairly cowardly way. It is a portrait, not unkind, of a beta male. He’s ...”

“... the latest world-heroic saga. While the climax, Soviet invasion, seems to have been replaced by General Jaruzelski’s quite unforeseen takeover, myth has already taken on the force of history, and two themes are now becoming established: that the ‘extremists’ in Solidarity overplayed their hands, thereby challenging the Soviet Union’s interest in ...”

“... points south as places of leisure and relaxation which for fifty weeks of the year can scarcely be said to exist at all. According to this view, the poetry associated with Mediterranean and Caribbean countries must always be off the literary map: one can expect very little from books with titles like The Fortunate ...”

“... empty. Then a Mayor of Rouen who was keen on statues discovered the original plaster cast – made by a Russian called Leopold Bernstamm – and the city council approved the making of a new image. Rouen bought itself a proper metal statue in 93 per cent copper and 7 per cent tin: the founders, Rudier of Châtillonsous-Bagneux, assert that such an alloy is ...”