“... and got to No. 8. Wham! were suddenly a headline act of ‘new pop’, which, according to Simon Reynolds, evolved the DIY codes of punk to ‘take on the mainstream and beat it at its own game’ and ‘involved a renaissance of glam’s interest in artifice and androgyny’. Other acts included in the category – the Human League, Eurythmics and ...”

“... she produced some entirely abstract paintings. One interpretation of these changing modes (this is Simon Watney, quoted by Spalding on the abstract pictures) is that ‘her entire career bears down relentlessly on this point of technical and conceptual sophistication.’ Once liberation was achieved, however, it was possible to settle for a style which was ...”

“... among potential contributors’, Novick reports, ‘shrei gevalt’ agencies like the ADL and Simon Wiesenthal Center ‘bombarded Jews with mailings announcing new anti-semitic threats’. The main ulterior motive, however, lay elsewhere. As American Jews enjoyed increasing success, they moved steadily to the Right politically: ‘Jews had everything to ...”

“... Brian Wilson over those of Norman Whitfield, and the social significance and songwriting talent of John Lennon rather than James Brown – persists. Clearly, too, most rock writing foregrounds lyrics, whereas most dance music works through texture, beats and effects. Back in 1976, punk set itself against disco wholeheartedly. Alan Jones and Jussi Kantonen ...”

“... one more film in Spain (Tristana, 1970), two more films in Mexico (The Exterminating Angel, 1962, Simon of the Desert, 1965), and six films in France (Diary of a Chambermaid, 1964, Belle de jour, 1966, The Milky Way, 1969, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972, The Phantom of Liberty, 1974, That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977).Viridiana has a number of ...”

“... the private sector sets aside for corporate sheen, although it does have a museum dedicated to John Charnley, who, almost half a century ago, pioneered the popular benchmark of the NHS’s success or failure, the hip replacement operation. They still do hips at Wrightington, and knees, and elbows, and shoulders. They deal with joint problems that are too ...”

“... skimps on some important details, and leaves others out entirely. For these, you can consult John Kercher’s book, Meredith, a memoir of his daughter and a passionate indictment of Knox and Sollecito. Kercher tells us that when Sollecito was first questioned about the knife with Meredith’s DNA on it, he said that it must have been left there after ...”

“... by remembering what an impression the book had made on them, reminding me that on first meeting Simon Hoggart I had done just that. I first read The Uses of Literacy (1957) in New York in 1963, not out of any sociological interest but from homesickness. Marooned on Broadway with Beyond the Fringe, for me the book was a taste of Yorkshire and more ...”

“... to make obscure symbols speak. Who wouldn’t want to be woken in the middle of the night, as Simon Kimmins was by his flatmate Ventris, and asked whether they would like to be ‘the second person in four thousand years to read this script’?In July 2022, the French scholar François Desset and a team of co-authors published what they claimed was proof ...”

“... in its exposure of the coming land-piracy that it seemed prophetic. It was efficiently directed by John MacKenzie, but the meat of the thing is in Barrie Keeffe’s script, his intimacy with tired ground that is about to be invaded, overwhelmed, rewritten. The advent of Margaret Thatcher was announced, as MacKenzie’s crime fable makes clear, by a slippery ...”

“... for future projects: Red Shift, a publishing imprint, after the Alan Garner novel; an essay on John Akomfrah’s film triptych The Unfinished Conversation, featuring the memories of Stuart Hall; a book of essays about Kanye West. These interests are all evident in Fisher’s work too.The second memorial lecture was given in January by the American ...”

“... and ‘high jinks’ – and framed events as though they were fictional. The playwright John Guare, who called Knox ‘my kind of murderess’, wondered whether she was a heroine in the mould of ‘Daisy Miller, an innocent young girl who goes to Europe for experience? Or is she Louise Brooks, the woman who takes what she wants and destroys ...”

“... Hellman is not the only snotty famous person to fall under her jaded eye. James Taylor and Carly Simon, Hellman’s guests one sunny afternoon, ‘smile stiffly’ at Mahoney when she brings coffee in on a serving tray, but otherwise ignore her. Mike Nichols and John Hersey win grudging approval – the former for giving ...”

“... merely how the game sometimes has to be played.The means they ultimately chose was to rally around John Major as the person best placed to stop Heseltine. Thatcher reluctantly came to accept this and therefore to accept the ostensible reasons they gave for her stepping aside. Very soon she would regret having fallen for it. Yet it had been clear for some time ...”

“... like the whiff of cordite long after the gun has been fired. When I mention this to David Cornwell/John le Carré, he says: ‘I can still feel it in my nostrils now.’ Historians, like spooks, need a sensitive nose, Orwell’s ‘Sniff, sniff’ for the detection of ‘all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls’.3 (And, in ...”