“... space of a court or pitch. Some (golf, croquet) occupy an uncertain middle ground, which may be one of the reasons they are so tedious to watch. Others (football, rugby) started as the former and, as they were codified, became the latter. Eton Fives was first played against a wall at the bottom of the chapel steps at Eton College, a particular space ...”

“... canvas delivers égalité, that principle amounts to no more than defensive containment. Hals may not be ambitious, but his clients are, and it’s his task to corral them. He struggles a bit – witness the contrived matching arm-sweeps of the officers on the far left and far right – but he wrests from the challenge a concerted blare of hot (and ...”

“... to make sure nothing so shocking as an empty seat should ever appear on the television screen. 6 May, London. A second session doing a voice-over for a commercial for Quartz washing-machines. I spend half an hour trying to invest the words ‘This frog’ with some singularity of tone that will distinguish this particular frog from the previous frog, with ...”

“... the constraints of real politics and the inner logic of the administrative mind. All this may well sound worthy but rather dull, and it has to be admitted that Professor Dilks’s volume makes heavy reading. Tory historians of the Feiling school used to beguile their readers by imaginative communion with the voices of the past, unencumbered by too ...”

“... appear in Oppenheimer. Or does he? The muddle of the film leaves a little room for doubt. He may be one of the entourage in a scene or two, without lines or a credit. But there is a larger omission in the movie. An essay in the New York Times in January reminded us that the Manhattan Project was a $2 billion adventure hidden from Congress. The Bomb was ...”

“... In​ 2015 Theresa May, who was then home secretary, announced that there would be an inquiry into undercover policing and the operation of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). This secret unit, whose purpose was to infiltrate subversive groups, was set up in 1968 as part of Special Branch in response to protests against the Vietnam War ...”

“... intoxicated, seemingly lost.This collective presentation of whiteness becomes monotonous, which may have been Washington’s intention, but the result is less successful than in his earlier books, where he focused on the specific ways that individuals (such as the well-meaning NGO worker in Lot) use their whiteness to their advantage. In Family ...”

“... Parliamentary friends who have an interest in the American military presence in Britain, but who may have neither the time nor the inclination to read a 340-page book. ‘Go to the Oriel Room in the Commons Library, and having got the Unsinkable Aircraft-Carrier, turn to pages 76 and 77. There you will find a map of all the American bases and installations ...”

“... by more than eighty. Not only can the American Skyhawks be launched from the carrier 25th of May, but, with spare parts from the United States, Sidewinder missiles, and extra fuel tanks to enable them to loiter over the Falklands, they are now altogether more formidable than they were two and a half years ago. Some of the Mirage III Super-Etendards have ...”

“... I’ve heard of this happening to a victim more than twenty times. Outside the courtroom, victims may face intimidation from the perpetrator or his family. Once on the stand, they will be cross-examined and can be asked questions about whether they have ever engaged in rough sex or flirted with the accused. The defence ...”

“... nowhow I save it from sorrow.If we are reading the play rather than watching a performance, we may have been confused a little earlier, when the ‘scene’ is said to be ‘Troy and Los Angeles’. But then we are often in two places (or more) in the theatre, and there is no reason why one of them shouldn’t be imagined or mythical. Saving a tragedy from ...”

“... about the important stuff, Siegfried is elsewhere far too generous with detail, which may explain why none of Dunthorne’s family had actually read the memoir. Four hundred pages in, Dunthorne still hasn’t reached his grandmother’s birth, only her conception. At the time, Siegfried was working for Auer, a company that made lighting ...”

“... remarkable early candlelights alongside the mezzotint reproductions Wright commissioned (until 10 May). The charisma of the grandest pictures – natural philosophers demonstrating in the glow of a lamp or candle; a shaggy-haired alchemist lit up by a burst of phosphorus – helps to explain why he began painting night pieces. The 1760s was the first decade ...”

“... and stained glass or building. Some chapters appear to be more ‘original’ than others, but it may also be the case that the information is less generally familiar. ‘Technical’, ‘specialist’ or ‘original’ are relative and even arbitrary terms. Less relative is the conclusion that the systematic investigation into the holdings of Oxford and ...”

“... formal shape to the very different poem that goes, ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to but they do’), I began to realise the flexibility as well as the power and memorability of good ‘formal’ verse. And when, after many months of cajoling, I got Tim to show me some of his own poems – he had not at the time published a book ...”