“... the death of Jan Palach, the student who, on 16 January 1969, burned himself to death at the foot of the statue of the country’s patron saint, the good King Wenceslas, in protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Soviet Union and three other countries of the Communist bloc. Now, for the first time in twenty years, ‘the ...”

“... redolent of a clergywear catalogue. Across the aisle, naked and rosy, dangles the largest baby foot I have ever seen. I text my friends a picture of it, to give them an idea of the infant’s proportions. King Baby, I call him, and steal looks at him throughout the flight; reassured, protected, in the presence of a monument.At the airport, I text my ...”

“... when things look really dicey or if it seems especially impractical (in Britain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth was enough to put us off in 2001). But since that decision in 1845, US election day has never budged, not by so much as a day, though there have been wars on, and worse, a civil war, and though it has often been both dicey and impractical. The ...”

“... Which would make Ziggy Stardust the beautiful butterfly that emerged from the chrysalis. Paul Trynka begins his biography with a description of Bowie’s performance of ‘Starman’ on Top of the Pops on 5 July 1972. It was three years since ‘Space Oddity’ had made it into the top ten after being used by the BBC in its broadcast of the Apollo 11 ...”

“... Britain and France as gangsters. What I remember were the things that made us laugh: the column by Paul Jennings that had a tongue-twister about ‘tuskless rustics eating crustless Ruskets’; the strip cartoon by Jules Feiffer; the witty reviews by Kenneth Tynan of plays that we had next to no chance of seeing; the house adverts by the subversive estate ...”

“... Crackers, and when the circus of Harpo reeled around her, or poked her with a stick, or got his foot caught in her sleeve, Dumont’s suffering was magnificently concealed. When Groucho once failed to supply a cue altogether, she walked on stage unbidden and was greeted with the unperformable ‘Ah, Mrs Rittenhouse! Won’t you – lie down.’ The baiting ...”

“... are filtered through perceptions of his status. He spends a lot of time exploring New York on foot, which means he is often among strangers. Being mugged acquires an extra sting if you’ve felt safe because the two men approaching you with a certain intentness had acknowledged you a little earlier as if you were equal participants in the culture of the ...”

“... be circumnavigated by the simple device of describing a bar as a ‘private members’ club’. Paul Raymond, patron of the Revuebar, was so determined to give his club an air of respectability that he appointed a Church of England chaplain and played the national anthem after shows.But Raymond and his fellow club owners were also prepared to pay the fines ...”

“... dropped from the top of the Post Office Tower with her beehive as a parachute. Christine Keeler, Paul Raymond, Malcolm Allison. The Society Restaurant, The Colony Club. Crisp white linen and more bottles than the bottling-plant at Truman’s Brewery. James Booth and Victor Spinetti semaphoring idiotically in the corner of the frame, as they trawl for ...”

“... assimilate him to the picturesque. ‘The dead are cadmium blue,’ he declares in ‘Homage to Paul Cézanne’: ‘We spread them with palette knives in broad blocks and panes.’ To gaze into ‘panes’ as opaque as these is mortally to reflect. That a spiritual challenge should be found in the medium is entirely characteristic. Like Hopkins, Wright ...”

“... year, he took a train north but got off at Carlisle in order to make his way across the border on foot. His journey took him to bothies, youth hostels and hotel bars, where he could be found ‘singing himself drinks’ and seeking out the old songs and stories. In Glencoe an old man told him of the massacre of 1690, remembered at only ‘third hand’. On ...”

“... raving that day, and he laughed loudly and heartily. And I said: ‘The cross that stood at the foot of my bed – it was bleeding hard.’ And at these words the person to whom I was speaking was amazed and became very serious. And at once I felt very ashamed at my carelessness and I thought: ‘This man takes seriously the least word that I say, and says ...”

“... physically demanding task,’ Dube told the Constitutional Court in January, ‘I pressed my left foot firmly against one of the cement blocks, using it as an anchor to counterbalance the force exerted by the rope.’The first Khuma rescuer was lowered into Shaft 11 on 12 November, a month after supplies stopped coming. ‘There was a person who came ...”

“... the hillside and are spreading over the lower meadow. Yes, the hill is coming down with hazel, as Paul Muldoon says. I’ve brought a bow saw with me and I begin cutting away some of the tall wands. Should I be disturbing this place? In among the stones, as I lift them, are a few large torpid worms which I put in the shopping bag I’ve brought. There’s a ...”

“... heaven! I remember being woken to the rightness of their hyperbole when I found them misquoted in Paul Foot’s Red Shelley, where they become, even in ‘corrected’ editions, Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive And to be young was very heaven. Gone is the intoxicated youthful illogic, by which even ‘bliss’ can be trumped. That ‘And’ as we ...”