“... Collections of the notable figures are beginning to appear: J.H. Prynne, Barry MacSweeney, Wendy Mulford, John James, with decent selections of Bill Griffiths, Allen Fisher, Douglas Oliver. And glimpses of many others, the reforgotten: John Temple, Anna Mendelssohn. It is a truth, unilaterally acknowledged (Cambridge and environs), that Raworth is the ...”

“... reason for the Taliban’s obstinacy may have been that they knew what they were dealing with. As Wendy Chamberlin, the US ambassador to Pakistan, put it, ‘there was no inclination in Washington to engage in a dialogue with the Taliban.’ Miller disputes this. But the US certainly knew its demand that the Taliban hand over the al-Qaida leadership would ...”

“... units are warm places,’ a social worker told me:They have carpets and drawings on the wall. The staff wear their own clothes and are not afraid to give new arrivals a hug. Polmont is grey and clinical. He would have been met and searched by uniformed officers … But it would have been walking into the wing that scared him most: the rows of ...”

“... As the historian Ian Kershaw says, trying to define fascism is ‘like trying to nail jelly to a wall’, yet for all its slipperiness, ‘fascism’ describes a uniquely destructive force in politics, and one for which we don’t have a better word. Unlike other forms of authoritarianism, such as military dictatorship, if left unchecked it is not only ...”

“... pink and white. Yellow pom-poms of japonica, horticultural cheerleaders. In a corner, under a high wall that gives away the previous identity of this public park as a decommissioned energy-generating plant, retired workers sway, stiffly and slowly, in t’ai chi ballets. I’m fascinated by the elderly Chinese couple who circle every morning for more than an ...”