“... though the prevalence of words like ‘halcyon’ makes us suspicious: the properties of sun, rock, sea, olive and cypress resist assimilation. Even the supposed ‘surrealism’ of Elytis’s early poems remains an elusive quality: of these only ‘Helen’ – ‘Forehead to windowpane we keep watch for the new sorrow’ – convincingly succeeds. But ...”

“... two weeks on the coast with Éluard and his second wife, Dominique, a woman ‘as solid as the rock of Gibraltar’ and ‘just the kind Pablo liked’. Gilot sensed that ‘Paul wasn’t the real reason for his trip.’ Picasso denied everything but her suspicions were confirmed by a friend: he had been spotted by journalists embarking on a ‘new ...”

“... Lands on the favoured shelf: John S.C. Abbott’s The Terror of the Indians (or the Life of David Crockett), or Adventures in Field, Flood & Forest (Stories of Danger & Daring). These inspirational tales, intended for youths who might strike out for the colonies and malarial swamps, were ‘founded on the real experiences of those who figure in ...”

“... Mohamed al-Assar, became assistant minister of defence. To further emphasise his reluctance to rock the boat, Morsi chose their replacements from a list of senior commanders. The director of military intelligence, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, was handed the defence portfolio, and the commander of the Third Field Army, Sedky Sobhy, was promoted to chief of ...”

“... said that, for all our uncertainty, we have a pretty good fix on the basic nature of the physical. David Lewis once claimed that ‘the physical nature of ordinary matter under mild conditions is very well understood.’ But this isn’t true. It isn’t true even when we put aside the point that the known phenomena of experience are wholly a matter of the ...”

“... and the not quite pea green of the kråkebolle, those little sea urchins that gulls snatch from rock pools and carry high into the air, soaring above the cliffs and then letting the little bodies fall over and over again till they break on the rocks below and the tangle of edible ooze and viscera hidden within the shell is exposed. My favourite thing to do ...”

“... to remember how she was overtaken by lust. For twenty years, she was faithful, ‘firm as a rock. Incorruptible. I always lived on a higher plane than other women because I was someone who stood for all the virtues.’ She rages at her body – which she now calls her enemy. ‘Cursed flesh, what have you done to my soul?’ But Luísa’s lover tells ...”

“... folks in all parts of the world.’ These connections have been discussed more recently by David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen in The Kaiser’s Holocaust (2010), and by Juergen Zimmerer in From Windhoek to Auschwitz? (2019). The links between the genocide in South-West Africa and the Holocaust depend on something else that Zimmerer makes clear: the ...”

“... counterproductive and ideologically driven’. In September, the Tory civil libertarian David Davis told Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, an unlikely place to hear a defence of unions, that ‘there are bits of [the bill] which look OTT, like requiring pickets to give their names to the police force. What is this? This isn’t Franco’s Britain.’ The ...”

“... exes are a hard-publishing lot. So far we have had diaries from two of its central figures, David Blunkett and Alastair Campbell, and from a spin-doctor hanger-on (Lance Price); a memoir by its most senior diplomat, the former ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer; and now memoirs by the former prime minister’s wife, his deputy and his ...”

“... better or worse than any other grower.On water they are ahead. Their produce is grown on blocks of rock wool about a metre off the ground; surplus water drains into long trays underneath the blocks and from there it’s borne off to the lagoons, along with rainwater off the roofs, to be pumped around again. The company’s energy strategy is imaginatively ...”

“... and despite her huge popularity with general readers – her 1931 novel Shadows on the Rock was the most widely read book in the United States in the year following its publication – even such serious-minded critics as Edmund Wilson and the young Lionel Trilling regularly disparaged her as spinsterish, middlebrow and reactionary: a kind of ...”

“... And of songs: ‘David of the White Rock’, the ‘Summer Song’ so soft, and that Beautiful tune to which roguish words by Welsh pit boys Are sung – but never more beautiful than here under the ...”

“... centre’ concerned with the local history of immigration. Above the tiny synagogue is the room of David Rodinsky, a Polish Jew of increasingly mysterious reputation. Latterly described as a translator and philosopher, he is said to have lived here in some sort of caretaking capacity. One day in the Sixties Rodinsky stepped out into Princelet Street and ...”

“... himself as a kind of brand-name or designer label, which could be attached to gallery art, film, rock music, light shows and books, eventually extending the ‘franchise’ to include magazines, Polaroid photographs, TV talk shows and other appearances. In his Dazed and Confused interview, Damien Hirst talks about his interest in designing billboards and his ...”