“... the depiction of autocrats in Cameroonian cartoons to Christian eschatology to posthumanism. We may not be sure where all this leads us, but Mbembe has never been interested in supplying easy answers to difficult questions.In Germany and France, Mbembe has (against his will) become the public face of an ill-defined ‘postcolonial left’. This isn’t ...”

“... Sebastian, the patron saint of Rio de Janeiro; and on the utility of the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker’s work The Denial of Death in understanding Zidane’s red card in 2006 as a symbolic variant of suicide in response to the dissolution of the ego. Glanville, magisterial and polyglot though he was, was not telling you this.Fifa​ was founded in ...”

“... CDs – the songs of Gerald Finzi, Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, Gurney, Ernest Farrar. (The baritone Stephen Varcoe is unsurpassed in this repertoire.) I have but to hear the dark opening bars of Finzi’s ‘Only a Man Harrowing Clods’ to dissolve in sticky war nostalgia and an engorged, unseemly longing for things unseen.Yet ...”

“... it was Anita Brookner.’ The young man, who seemed remarkably undeferential, said security may have thought it was a device. The Queen said: ‘Yes. That is exactly what it is. A book is a device to ignite the imagination.’ The footman said: ‘Yes, maam.’ It was as if he was talking to his grandmother, and not for the first time the Queen was made ...”

“... mothers are an essential item of equipment in any psyche, and that though relations with mothers may be difficult or even dreadful, attachment to them is mandatory. They also know, as a corollary, that a denial of attachment is a failure to confront the reality of mother-attachment.‘You must find it very disturbing.’‘No, I find it ...”