“... enchantment that came completely naturally,’ Julia Costenla, an Argentine journalist told Jon Lee Anderson when he was researching his biography of Guevara. ‘If he entered a room, everything began revolving around him.’That night he found a seat in a corner of the embassy gardens and everyone gathered round. I haven’t much memory of what was ...”

“... of Sinn Fein councillor Bobby Lavery – within twelve months they had also killed his son; Brian Nelson, a British military intelligence agent, described in court by a Colonel J as a ‘hero’, conspired to murder, among others, Belfast city councillor Alex Maskey – that Brian Nelson escaped multiple life ...”

“... of Music, and eventually started playing in a bar, becoming fascinated by Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. He got a Saturday job to fund his record-buying habit. As he became more involved with what was happening in music, he was aware that the older generation was not amused. ‘People fucking hated it. And no one hated it more than my father … he ...”

“... glorifying the work of the Velvet Underground over Motown releases, the production skills of 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 ...”

“... personally called to mind weren’t so pale: Timmy Thomas, Shuggie Otis, Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Lee Perry.)But Schütte isn’t finished yet. Kraftwerk’s influence, it seems, also determined every molecule of 1980s electro-pop. They ‘set the blueprint for all later bands and musicians working in the area of electronic music’. I do get twitchy around ...”

“... and Miller was relieved of duties, the position now open for a more experienced hand. Hermione Lee, then at work on her biography of Penelope Fitzgerald, was invited to be Miller’s successor, but had to decline, sparing herself no end of eventual aggravation.Into this vacancy the editor and biographer James Atlas tentatively ventured. He had made his ...”

“... opus (1963). It’s hard to see this as a timely work, and things weren’t much better in 1963: Brian Lewis, in his Introduction to this edition, says the book was published ‘just in time to become unfashionable virtually overnight’. With friends like these, we might think, who needs undertakers? Mitry was certainly no slacker, as this book and his ...”

“... to London to make witness statements, the substance of which is in my memo. In mid-1999, Daniel Lee, assistant solicitor to the Inquiry, informed me that he had discovered the memo in a ‘trawl’ of documents sent to the new Inquiry by the present Sunday Times management, and asked whether I could identify it. Indeed I could, I replied. The memo was then ...”

“... Notice the daub that represents Princess Di in tiara outside the alms-houses that shelter in the lee of the Greenwich power-station. Look back at each turn of the river on the charming nautical town, the sun setting across the mud. But forget any notion of keeping to the path. The Dome site finishes all that. A security gate blocks the route towards the ...”

“... accomplishment: he ‘made America feel good about itself again’, as the Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney put it. But what exactly was it about Reagan that made Americans feel good?According to the conventional wisdom then and now, it was all about overcoming the dreaded ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ (dreaded, at least, by the foreign policy ...”

“... young client had none of the star power of already signed performers like Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee; his billing read ‘Extra Added Attraction’, and for Sinatra this particular gig was a pretty big deal. As Donald Clarke puts it in All or Nothing at All: A Life of Frank Sinatra (1997), the Paramount Theatre was ‘one of the shrines of the Swing ...”

“... who would now be seen a natural performer for the television age, Patrick Moore channelled by Brian Blessed, sinks a shaft in Sussex, going deeper than anyone has gone before, to prove that ‘the world upon which we live is itself a living organism, endowed … with a circulation, a respiration, and a nervous system of its own.’ Challenger’s dig ...”

“... you thought of me when I was a kid?’ ‘Nice,’ said Mr Simpson, rocking. ‘A quiet boy.’ Brian Simpson’s sister looks after him. She brought us tea and a plastic tub of biscuits. ‘I remember,’ he said. ‘I remember’ – and his hands beat a semaphore, as if guiding the words into the room – ‘that Anthony would walk up at the end of the ...”

“... the pupils are half-hidden under the eyelids; as if the eyes had stopped between floors. Spike Lee has similar eyes, which I find attractive, maybe because they give a sense of inhabiting worlds other than this; they are, of course, irritating for exactly the same reason.A call from Barry Cryer, who claims to have heard a woman outside Liberty’s saying ...”

“... the campaign continues (and the piece is still on their website). In 2022, the Missouri Republican Brian Seitz introduced a state bill making abortion a felony, including in the case of an ectopic pregnancy.The new abortion bans also pose risks to women having miscarriages, since a dilation and curettage (or, if the pregnancy is further advanced, a dilation ...”