“... and ‘travels a good deal.’ In form, Doctor Criminale is an old-fashioned quest novel. Francis Jay, a young British journalist – trained in deconstruction and cultural politics at Sussex – is left high and dry when his paper (evidently the ill-fated Sunday Correspondent) folds. Following a disastrous Booker ceremony at which he comports himself on ...”

“... Peter Ueberroth. By no coincidence, Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy – on the Jay Leno Tonight show – on the day Issa withdrew. It was clear from the outset that if a ‘No on Recall’ vote supporting Davis failed to pass by even a slight margin, only a fraction of the votes cast for Davis would be enough to elect one of the alternative ...”

“... bar. I leafed through a book I had just bought, Greater Gotham, the second volume of Mike Wallace’s history of New York from the Spanish-American War of 1898 to the end of the First World War, and I read the pages about Greenwich Village – these were the years when the Village became the bohemian quarter of the city. Then, on my way back to ...”

“... make it through those four years.’ Or consider the message read out to Vice President-elect Mike Pence by the cast of Hamilton after he attended a performance: ‘We are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable ...”

“... is). They could be reported by the mainstream press, as quoted ‘allegations’. Word of mouth, Jay Leno and the cartoonists would do the rest. When (as he has recently been doing rather often) Matt Drudge addresses journalists’ conventions he likes to strike a crusading pose. He foresees, as he told the National Press Conference of 2 June, ‘an era ...”

“... at the Glen, a racetrack 150 miles from the original site. Performers included Miley Cyrus and Jay-Z. A few wrinkly legends, including the Zombies and Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin famously turned down the offer to play fifty years ago) were also billed, alongside veterans from the founding festival: Santana, David Crosby, Country Joe McDonald, the remains of ...”

“... he’d styled himself as a Mod, a hippy and a Buddhist; he’d called himself Davie Jones, David Jay and David Bowie (after Richard Widmark’s portrayal of Jim Bowie in The Alamo, though he pronounces it the southern English way, the first syllable rhyming with ‘snow’ rather than ‘shoe’ or ‘cow’). Whatever it took. One of the things Trynka’s ...”

“... with dubious opinions about race relations and strong regional enthusiasms. (My father’s cousin, Mike Greenblatt, wrote a well-known football song: ‘I’m a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech, and a hell of an engineer.’) Another relation ventured out west, with his wife and two small children, to try his hand as a pedlar in Wyoming. This was the occasion ...”

“... President-elect Trump tweeted last November after the cast addressed Vice President-elect Mike Pence, as he was leaving the theatre, calling on the new administration ‘to work on behalf of all of us’.) Walt Whitman sang in ‘Mannahatta’ of a city ‘liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient’. Trump wished to be more than accepted in ...”