“... and also no risk for the spectator’. In 1939, however, Greenberg was still writing from a point prior to the triumph of American Modernism. He was attempting to justify Modernism by recalling the avant-garde’s origin in the secession of artists from the 19th-century French bourgeoisie, first into bohemia and then into the depoliticised embrace of ‘art ...”

“... The French may have had Charles Baudelaire, but they wanted to be Chuck Berry or Johnny Thunders; Jim Morrison was worshipped as a rock god, but wanted to drop out and be Baudelaire. A few years further back, the Beats saw something of themselves in scurvy exemplars like Verlaine and Rimbaud: a yen for intoxicants, an awe before Black culture, a certain ...”

“... set up as the result of an initiative by the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, James Prior. The following year, Adams, already an Assembly member, became MP for West Belfast (he held the seat in 1987 before losing it to the SDLP in 1992). At the same time, Adams, McGuinness and other Northerners displaced the Party’s old leadership in elections ...”

“... Chamberlain’s diaries, which includes an account of his meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden prior to the Munich conference in 1938. Blair is struck by how unfairly history has treated Chamberlain. ‘We are taught that Chamberlain was a dupe; a fool, taken in by Hitler’s charm. He wasn’t. He was entirely alive to his badness.’ Chamberlain ...”

“... no novelist; Eric Bellchambers, WEA organiser in his Sussex days, remembers him as a prima donna; Jim Fyrth, an extra-mural tutor who prides himself on using ‘simple but lively language’, rebukes Raymond for being ‘convoluted’, ‘dense’ and ‘impenetrable’ (‘I often could not understand what he was talking about’); his Cambridge colleagues ...”

“... for a private jet to fly an Aids patient to San Francisco, where he was dumped without prior warning and later died. Of all the hospitals in New York, only the NYU Medical Centre openly accepted Aids patients, and even there they were denied admittance to shared rooms. The NYU School of Medicine, the Beth Israel Medical Centre and Columbia ...”

“... from childhood, to live in London. Mrs Moore died in her bed surrounded by photos of her husband, Jim, a retired British soldier, who died a number of years before. ‘It was the best end,’ a friend of hers said, ‘if you’ll forgive the use of such a positive word in connection with such a hellish situation. But whatever was happening around her, it ...”