“... flawed persona. ‘The Many Faces of R. Crumb’, a two-page spread produced at the height of his powers in 1972, begins with a ridiculous image of the artist masturbating to one of his own comics and ejaculating out of his studio window, then goes on to depict him as a penitent saint, a fascist creep, a self-centred SOB, a sentimental slob, a rugged ...”

“... idiom. Alan’s stiff upper lip collapsed. What, he wondered, could possibly he worse? Well, Dylan Thomas, of course. The bibulous Welsh poet, already squandering his talent as prodigally as other people’s money, became Margaret’s next obsession. Thomas was the cad to end all cads, the cadger to end all cadgers. No ...”

“... especially despised Surrealism, reserving particular contempt for the New Apocalypse school (Dylan Thomas and Co), whose influence was just beginning to register on the Australian literary scene, mainly thanks to the only avant-garde journal of the time, Angry Penguins. Angry Penguins was edited by Max Harris, a student at Adelaide University, and John ...”

“... Fruman in condemning Coleridge as an impotent fraud and plagiarist, many reluctantly agreed with Thomas McFarland when he declared: ‘Coleridge’s ruin, in both life and work, is ... the true human fact; the academic classic and the conventional achievement the illusion.’ It may be that in the protracted aftermath to the much insisted on death of the ...”

“... later her relative position towards America and Russia was much the same, but the three medium powers had easily surpassed Britain’s economic performance, the weakest of them, France, by over 40 per cent. This development could not have been foreseen – or at any rate was not – by Eden or any of his contemporaries. It was natural that Churchill and ...”

“... superiority that commands prestige, and abilities of which society cannot sanely deprive itself.Thomas Piketty quotes Boutmy’s proposition in Capital in the 21st Century (2013), the bestseller that made him a household name among today’s intellectual and business elite. According to Piketty – and it is hard to disagree – this ‘incredible ...”

“... Gaza for Sabbatai Sevi, the innumerable éminences grises throughout history, if not, indeed, the powers behind the thrones. Nahman is not exactly an éminence grise, but he does bear witness to Jacob’s Messianic awakening: ‘When I look at him, I see that there are people who are born with something that I cannot find the words for, something that means ...”

“... and charisma with a gift for big tech, electro-prophecy and bullshit. He was a near perfect Thomas Pynchon character, and his cameo appearance in Pynchon’s Against the Day in 2006 confirmed his status as a counter-cultural hero. Pynchon’s Tesla is a fleeting and mysterious presence, a man around whom other characters weave tall tales. Towards the ...”

“... arts, and over a period of twenty years he had won himself a battery of quasi-monarchical powers throughout the Dutch provinces. He thanked God for sending the wind that sped him and 15,000 Dutch soldiers to Torbay on the auspicious date of 5 November; but he also took care to smooth the path of providence by means of a web of alliances with dissident ...”

“... been plenty for evangelicals to complain about even since the triumphs of Bush and Karl Rove. As Thomas Frank argued in 2004 in his book What’s the Matter with Kansas?, the striking thing about the Republican alliance with evangelicals has been the thinness of their legislative achievements: abortion is still legal, campaigners for gay rights have made ...”

“... marble busts on the walls. I noticed Ascherson was taking his time over an inscription to the poet Thomas Campbell, and some words of Campbell’s began to echo somewhere in my head, two lines from The Pleasures of Hope. ‘Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. Not good lines, but they seemed good enough as I ...”

“... audience is a daunting prospect and few people have tried; the most successful, until now, was Thomas Keneally, whose novel Towards Asmara (1989), set in the guerrilla-held areas at the time of the liberation war, was a picaresque homage to the Eritrean people. Michela Wrong has attempted something different: an idiosyncratic, free-ranging history of ...”

“... beings who understand the implications of nuclear warfare. It is only among the non-nuclear minor powers that war may appeal as a rational way of obtaining one’s ends. On the other hand, his prose style is dialectical and reflects the clash of thesis and antithesis in human affairs: as with Oakeshott’s writings, the meaning is not always on the ...”

“... are peculiarly well-read, you might also spot the surprising rebirth of lines by the Cavalier poet Thomas Carew addressed to his beloved: Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose: For in your Beauty’s orient deep, These flowers as in their causes, sleep. Appropriate in its strange way: Carew’s essence of beauty is the ...”

“... figures linked to News International were charged with breaching the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – which deals with the interception of communication – and related offences. Their trial began in October 2013. Murdoch’s centrality to UK power was vividly illustrated. Brooks, his schmoozer-in-chief, popped into MI5 for briefings and hobnobbed ...”