“... to the discipline of creative writing, whose ultimate commitment is not to knowledge but to what Donald Barthelme called “Not-Knowing”’. Formed in the shadow of New Criticism, the creative writing discourse still displays ‘not a commitment to ignorance, exactly, but … a commitment to innocence’. This commitment, this sense of writing being ...”

“... sky with the sycamores over the wall still threshing in the wind and the house full of evening light.In contrast the Chelsea Flower Show looks to me like hell on earth, with the main concourse as thronged as Oxford Street. The winning gardens seldom appeal, with the ubiquity of concrete always a problem (though not for the judges). As usual the proceedings ...”

“... towards ‘extra-human nature’. An Anthropocene that begins ten thousand years ago sheds no light on the ecological dynamic of recent centuries; modern Anthropocenes – usually conceived as more or less coeval with mercantile, industrial or postwar capitalism – either ignore the specific origins of the period or, at best, acknowledge but fail to ...”

“... Facebook is generally agreed to have played a big, perhaps even a crucial, role in the election of Donald Trump. The benefit to humanity is not clear. This thought, or something like it, seems to have occurred to Zuckerberg, because the new mission statement spells out a reason for all this connectedness. It says that the new mission is to ‘give people the ...”

“... as an ‘intentional assault on an individual’s innermost privacy’. Ironically, in the light of recent developments, it also noted that a ‘moral complaints bureau’ had been set up by the Screen Actors’ Guild to deal with ‘casting couch complaints’. We must hope the newly proposed Hollywood-led US Commission on Sexual Harassment and ...”

“... staff and visiting speakers. What does this mean in practice? The Act is sweeping in ambition but light on detail. It does specify that the use of university premises cannot be ‘denied to any individual or body’ on the grounds of ‘their ideas or opinions’ or ‘policy or objectives’. It also says that academic staff have the right not to be ...”

“... in which he figured.Speaking earlier about the business side of the magazine, you made light of it – after a fashion. But the sums of money involved must have been frightening –They became enormous. It was partly my megalomania at the outset. Although the New Review was famous for not paying its contributors, that only became the case in the ...”

“... nearly wrecking talks on strategic arms limitation (Ford’s young, hawkish secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, had successfully called for a freeze on Salt II). Castro was taking big risks, but as Gleijeses argues, his adventures in Latin America had reached an impasse, while Africa still offered opportunities. Cuba had its anti-imperialist credentials to ...”

“... badly treated by everybody.’ Caitlyn Jenner says she will still vote Republican, even for Donald Trump, despite the party’s dire record on LGBT issues. She is being consistent. As Bruce, the famous athlete, Bizzinger recalls, she had been a weapon in the Cold War: ‘Mom and apple pie with a daub of vanilla ice cream for deliciousness in a country ...”

“... choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because ...”

“... who lost to Reform, beaten by Barry Elliott, a ‘striking individual’, as Vladimir Putin called Donald Trump. She still sits on the town council, a body with few powers; it has also fallen to Reform. She told me how horrified she’d been during the last campaign at the hostility provoked by the mere mention of Keir Starmer’s name, or the sight of a ...”

“... these and other scholars, the dynamics of European integration emerge in a cooler, more searching light than in van Middelaar’s panegyrics, revealing what these omit and scrutinising what they don’t with a finer lens.The Union, as we know it today, is a complex composed of five principal institutions: the European Commission, the European Court of ...”

“... a first draft of The Idiot in the early 2000s, publishing it only in 2017 – by which point Donald Trump, a familiar figure from my youth, was somehow in charge of the United States, and Roe was under serious threat, and I, on the eve of my fortieth birthday, was going around the country promoting a ‘debut novel’ about a painful crush I had had when ...”