“... of the Berlin political class about their victory, Syriza’s politicians would have done well to read Winkler’s piece in Die Zeit, where he announced that, seen in the context of the historical struggle for Western values, the new Greek government was a symptom of crisis, an expression of Putin’s manipulation as well as the resurgent Front National in ...”

“... the future. Homo sapiens may cease to be, not because Earth will become uninhabitable or because Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un will push the button, but because we will become new kinds of beings: our bodies, minds and relationships with the environment and with mechanical devices will be altered in fundamental ways. Our capacities to know and to do things ...”

“... used as a term of abuse, promiscuously applied to figures who share nothing in common, such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, it remains striking how long Woodward insisted that far from representing what Hofstadter called the ‘paranoid style’ of American politics, the People’s Party had advanced ‘one of the most thoroughgoing critiques of ...”

“... to descriptions of what she does, how she holds herself and the way she talks.Fatale should be read in relation to La Position du tireur couché (1981), translated as The Gunman, Manchette’s final néo-polar, whose protagonist is also an assassin. Martin Terrier is a contract killer who works for ‘the company’. The book’s title indicates ...”

“... dressed, apparently tipsy or drunk’ workers got on the train; badges on their lapels read ‘Westfront 1938-1939’. Thousands of labourers had been mobilised since 1936 (initially in secret) to build bunkers, tunnels and tank-traps along the Siegfried Line. The workers, packed like sardines in the third-class compartments, demanded to be moved ...”

“... love stories, but Lochhead does seem most inventive when she is (and is on the) offensive. Donald Davie (LRB, Vol. 6, No 11), seeking a contrast to the knotted texture of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry, has used the notion of a poetry that is ‘ventilated’, a poetry that lets us hear the natural speaking voice. This aptly characterises Lochhead’s ...”

“... Council. Anyone being groomed for the India Service and, indeed, for the Colonial Service had to read his works. From Lyall in India to Swettenham in Malaya, Shepstone in Natal, Cromer in Egypt, Lugard in Nigeria and Uganda, Harold MacMichael in Sudan and Donald Cameron in Tanganyika, colonial administrators throughout the ...”

“... 2017 (a version appeared the year before in Freeman’s) and records events that took place before Donald Trump was elected president, and before the detention of children and families became a daily news story. There is a lot of continuity, however, not only in policy but in national sentiment. As Luiselli learns on her road trip, anti-immigrant ...”

“... seems a flimsy pretence. Yet for all its flaws, American Psycho was prophetic in its invocation of Donald Trump as aspirational monster-mogul and endures as an exhibit of slasher-film iconography owing to Mary Harron’s screen adaptation from 2000. The film’s spotless scene design (everything showroom shiny, the downtown loft as laboratory, anticipating the ...”

“... what mothers give and resent giving, of what daughters learn and hate learning. Helen isn’t what Donald Winnicott in 1953 called a ‘good enough mother’ – not by a long shot. But she gave what she could: she didn’t abort Jo, she kept her alive and taught her what she knew of the world. Jo knows, and hates, that she’s repeating the script: ‘I ...”

“... Old Man’s Road you are reviewing, isn’t it?’ he wrote to Kenneth Koch in January 1957: I read some of it and dropped it with a little whinny of disgust. He really is a pig. Well, now let’s see. First, he wrote the poems at the end … of his self-exile in ‘Amedica’. He has the chair of poetry at Oxford, his bally old university … Well, he has ...”

“... three months. ‘We understand that three months is a long period of time,’ the letter read, ‘and we are grateful for your service.’ Hundreds of Washington residents had received the same summons. I already knew that 4 March had been set as the start date of Donald Trump’s criminal trial for his efforts to ...”

“... Not sure the exact wording.’ She then recommended a couple of online commentators I might read, including Jay Beecher, a former Ukip activist who was alleged last year by the Observer to have been paid £80,000 by someone working for Ghislaine Maxwell’s family to ‘investigate’ Giuffre. Lady Victoria, sister of the 8th Marquess of Bristol, is ...”

“... It’s the only chance I get to write fiction.’ My favourite tale, which I recall hearing from Donald Wise, a courtly former Suffolk Regiment officer who became a correspondent for the Daily Express and later the Daily Mirror, involved a British reporter in Cairo during the brief lifetime of the United Arab Republic of Egypt and Syria. The reporter was ...”

“... not seem to have profited much by the penetration. It’s not absolutely clear whether, when he read a transcript of the Moscow trials in 1937, Chambers was more affected by fear than revulsion. At any rate, he underwent an excruciating self-examination. He had not failed to notice that other members of his subterranean fraternity, when recalled to ...”