“... officials to be trained in Singapore, but Peter Sloterdijk’s line that statues of Mao will one day be replaced with ones of LKY now seems a dated exuberance. The meritocratic ideology of Singapore has begun to show signs of wear, and its elite seems incapable of regenerating itself as that of the PRC does. Lee’s pioneer generation – the ‘Men in ...”

“... eyes shine.’ The same man also advised him to ‘step up production to, ideally, a picture a day’. His early paintings, Feaver writes, are ‘naive in that they appear untouched by, indeed oblivious to, academic discipline’. Over the next few years, as he moved around London, enjoying its pleasures, he spoke of himself as a painter. Later he ...”

“... sitting at the next table. She rushed over and did the Heimlich manoeuvre and saved his life. Next day the headline read: Barbra Streisand Takes the Food Right Out of a Person’s Mouth.’ Streisand repeats the joke in her autobiography, My Name Is Barbra, to explain why she felt a ‘certain kinship’ with Bill Clinton during his presidency. ‘People can ...”

“... for a job in Oxford’s geography department wasn’t idle: in a recent essay in the Times, Douglas Murray, a director of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, took as a sign of our putative crisis over free speech the difficulty someone who opposes a net zero emissions goal has in becoming a university vice chancellor. As Lord Wallace of Saltaire remarked ...”

“... its own specification for a ‘machine-gun destroyer’ to the Landships Committee. That same day, a demonstration of a tracked Killen-Strait tractor crossing various obstacles was held at Wembley Park for the benefit of Churchill and Lloyd George. It led to a decision to shift responsibility for the Landships Committee from the Admiralty to Lloyd ...”

“... the Middle East’, as Churchill had put it in 1940, receded from view until the dramas of the Six Day War in 1967, the next war in 1973, and the oil crisis. This had a direct impact on British politics, leading to Harold Wilson’s return to Downing Street in 1974. He resigned two years later in a miasma of dark suspicion, not much brightened by his ...”

“... Agata. Silent and restless as a mongoose she used to move about from room to room the whole day, a dust towel in her hand, in search of something to scrub. She drives away the other servants, destroys the furniture, hates the dog and walks in her sleep. In a permanent rage, she is close to cheerful only when one of Munthe’s patients is about to die ...”

“... drinking with artists who were busy inventing their reputations. One night, I sat at the bar with Douglas Gordon while he drew me pictures of devils (I have them somewhere). Sarah Lucas and I walked the streets in search of more drink after Damien Hirst told Will Self to ‘crack a fucking smile’. I think I sang with Milli Vanilli. Life coaches will tell ...”

“... British protectorate in 1884 and the territory was rapidly expanded to roughly the size of modern-day Uganda. In 1895 a 300-strong contingent of Punjabi troops was brought in to put down an uprising by the Nubi in the north-west, which had led to the killing of several British officers. It was already possible to identify three groups of Indians in Uganda by ...”

“... to establish the king as a player in wartime decision-making, most notably when he was championing Douglas Haig, Jones sees his contribution as having less to do with what he did than with his status, which made him the object of generous patriotic feeling. During the mass mobilisation of 1914-16, men joined up to fight for ‘king and country’, with ...”

“... elsewhere alludes to Breuning’s testimony that Beethoven incessantly (and at all hours of the day and night) jotted down ideas for fear of forgetting them. The young Breuning is intrigued by the appearance of a Beethoven sketch-book, which he finds on a piece of furniture in Beethoven’s apartment (‘it was completely full of notes, written in fits and ...”

“... even Mrs Beeton – writing about cooking does not rate high). Betty Friedan gets in, but not Mary Douglas; Hannah Arendt, but not Barbara Wootton. In general, journalists get a raw deal. There is no entry on Katharine Whitehorn, Polly Toynbee, Nancy Spain, Helen Gurley Brown. Agony aunts get an even rawer deal: Marje Proops, Anne Landers and Dear Abby are ...”

“... addresses were in Kentish Town, off Oxford Street and in Bloomsbury, all plaque-less to this day no doubt, though Red Ken, before he faded to a more electable off pink, might have thought of honouring this most ragingly anti-authoritarian of London’s asylum seekers.) In 1872 Vallès was sentenced to death in absentia by the courts of the new and as yet ...”

“... exposed. I was mad with rage and fury … I think God must have put a coat of armour on me that day.’ (Hart uses the term ‘Dervishes’ rather than ‘Ansar’, as it appeared in contemporary accounts.) At Abu Klea in January 1885, the Desert Column on its way to relieve General Gordon (besieged at Khartoum) encountered its toughest test against the ...”

“... tabloids reported in March that the chairman and vice-chairman of Newcastle, Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall, had ridiculed fans who paid the extortionate prices for replica shirts (and said that Geordie women were ‘dogs’), six million was wiped off the club’s share value. Peter Johnson spent his first quarter of a century as a fan at ...”