“... of the Democratic Unionist Party said he expected to find holes in the noses of Garret Fitzgerald, John Hume and Dick Spring – evidence of Haughey’s rope. The three men walked right into that easy quip. So, this is what we’re all reduced to in the eyes of Northern Unionists – papal bulls. This is the old game of Irish national politics. You reduce ...”

“... who knocked me flat before I could think, before I knew a thing, leaving me no way back, and took John Keats in a room by the Spanish Steps, stanza della morte, where I caught one glimpse of the flowered beams and fainted fast, and took Pierre Bonnard who delved with me deep in the mysteries of domesticity, year in, year out, leaving me no way back, and took ...”

“... of ‘God Save the Queen’ on the Thames, a rebellious parody of the Royal River Pageant. John Lydon won himself a place in British folklore. But for all the mock outrage over the Pistols’ anarchic antics and seditious lyrics, none of those involved – among them Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood – faced criminal charges. The performance was ...”

“... Israel’s activities in Gaza and Lebanon are referred to as the ‘Israeli-American’ war. John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, has refused to sanction a diplomatic end to the current conflict because ‘I’d like to know when there’s been an effective ceasefire between a terrorist organisation and a state in the past.’ Such sentiments ...”

“... Expressionists, Herbert Huncke plus any given Beat, all of the New York School, Bob Dylan, Nico, John Cale, Lou Reed, Malcolm McLaren, Patti Smith and Mapplethorpe, William Eggleston, and … hang on, here’s Walker Evans. And there, not exactly flitting past, goes the bulky shadow of Henry James. Tippins has embarked on a compendious venture, as the index ...”

“... In 1919 she began to play an active part in Berlin Dada alongside Hausmann, George Grosz, John Heartfield and the rest. All of these artists shared her communist commitments, and all were making collage. But none demonstrated the command of mass cultural imagery Hoch developed so quickly, and none managed to work on a similarly ambitious scale. It was ...”

“... he (or we) can handle, and solves some of it in his own fashion. This fashion doesn’t please John Brolin as Bigfoot, the crony/tormentor cop, who wanted more arrests. Katherine Waterston is very persuasive as Doc’s returning old flame, a beach girl who has got herself involved in an elaborate scheme to take a rich man’s money from him; and Jena ...”

“... had any significance, he said the inhabitants of a Catholic country – as I write the remains of John Paul II are doing the local rounds, Pátzcuaro this afternoon, Morelia this evening – should know the answer to the question, and then added a gloss to the effect that God took six days to make the mess we live in, and then had the gall to give himself a ...”

“... There’s been no serious suggestion of a boycott by players or fans. Despite the presence of John Terry and a Russian oligarch, the person who really spoiled the pictures of Chelsea celebrating their recent European Cup win was George Osborne, standing grinning among the officials. Ukraine’s Polish co-hosts are telling the Germans not to snub Euro ...”

“... such as David Smith and Anthony Caro, rendered industrial production aesthetic, while others like John Chamberlain and Arman artified its debris: some of the trashed cars and smashed commodities at Hangar 17 recall the work of the latter pair. There is a further ambiguity of display: the photographs reveal an arrangement of things that is no longer forensic ...”

“... The places​ were Philadelphia and New York, the names were John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans and a few others, heirs to Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, spoken of with awe in every version of the story. Something called West Coast jazz, thought by many to be an oxymoron, was making itself heard in the persons of Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Shelly Manne and Dave Brubeck ...”

“... something stranger and more disturbing than anything painters commonly manage comes through. Sir John Herschel’s stubbly chin and wild white hair as they emerge from draped velvet in Julia Margaret Cameron’s photograph do not conform to the painterly canon of images of great men. But many early art photographs do recall paintings. Country people in Peter ...”

“... say about most of the Tories, too, notably the nauseating and utterly uncompromising reactionary John Croker, for whom the rotten boroughs were the essence of freedom and prosperity; Sir Robert Inglis, who proclaimed that ‘this House would not be bound by the cries of a majority of the people’, and Lord Lyndhurst, who is described by Pearce as a ...”

“... surprises. More than once, we come across the scene from the end of Ford’s The Searchers, where John Wayne catches up with the girl who’s been stolen by the Indians. We think he’s going to kill her, because he hates the idea of contamination, however innocently incurred. He picks her up and everything changes. He carries her back towards home, all ...”

“... over the airwaves. It’s hard to decipher at first but is gradually revealed to be a recording of John Denver singing ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’. This is someone’s idea of a joke. Ridley Scott’s certainly, but also that of someone within the story. The song would have been 133 years old in 2104, so its appearance is proof either of classic status ...”