“... 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 ...”

“... the English-speaking world imagine. In his introduction to a new translation of Jappe’s book by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Clark speaks of Debord as a thinker who engaged with the future as well as the present and whose time is yet to come.* The Situationist City also seeks to make connections between Situationist ideas and developments in mainstream ...”

“... fade-ins and fade-outs. Filled with visceral and revolting images, it’s a novel that is easy to read but difficult to forget. The words ‘loneliness and silence and blackness’ recur frequently, along with ‘pain’ and ‘pus’. But, true to form, Trumbo manages to bring it all to an upbeat conclusion. In the visionary final section, an uneasy ...”

“... turn. Indeed, when Wilde’s letter referring to the peculiar virtues of the witness’s mouth was read out in court, Douglas exploded: ‘it is a rotten, sodomitically inclined letter written by a diabolical scoundrel to a wretchedly silly youth. You ought to be ashamed to bring it out here.’ Mr Justice Darling advised him that he was not in court to ...”

“... contemptuous of established political structures, that stood around me now. Few seemed to have read the draft law, but all of them thought it would destroy any connection they might have to liberal freedoms, because it would involve the removal of foreign funding from the civil society NGOs on which many depend.Homemade signs in Georgian and English ...”

“... Blacks, or immigrants, or a faraway national government, helps to explain why in the last election Donald Trump carried Tennessee in a landslide, winning 60 per cent of the vote and all but three of the state’s 95 counties. In many parts of the US, every month is Confederate History Month.Since the election of Ronald Reagan, historians have struggled to ...”

“... judicial reforms invalid; the US Supreme Court was asked (but declined) to disqualify Donald Trump from standing for president; and the International Court of Justice was asked (but declined) to order Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza. These events attest to the political vitality of law, courts and the rule of law. It is an ...”

“... back to its distracted viewers. Joke-blowers filled the ozone: Milton Berle, George Gobel, Donald O’Connor, Jack Carter, Ernie Kovacs, Red Skelton. In this soporific landscape, Caesar’s brand of intelligent laughter – satirical, sketch-driven, character-based, artful – stood out like a good deed in a naughty world. It was ‘like seeing a new ...”

“... Wisely, he navigates away from the Guy himself, understanding that the best you can do with Donald Trump is to sound almost as weird as he does. The closest we get is in ‘Love Letter’, a story that takes the form of a letter from a ‘GPa’ about the world he has made for his grandson: ‘It did not seem (and please destroy this letter after you ...”

“... his mother said, ‘and gave us a military salute as he disappeared behind the door.’ She had read a piece in the Spectator that described the departing soldiers as modern crusaders, but she felt ‘there is something that they have that no crusader ever had, and it was shining in V.D.’s face today.’ Fernald’s ship docked at Le Havre, from where he ...”

“... of saving at the time.’) Then Larkin (who had published two novels while still in his twenties) read his friend’s typescript, making fundamental and detailed suggestions for improvement. Leader provides an excellent account of Larkin’s contribution to the revising of what became Lucky Jim, a contribution, Larkin was prone to feel later in his life, that ...”

“... shunted aside at the New Yorker as postmodernists, minimalists and collagists (specifically Donald Barthelme) became the vogue. Updike was spared the indignity of finding himself on the outs, though the perpetual honeymoon had its bumpy patches. Tina Brown’s Batmobile arrival from Vanity Fair to assume the editorship in 1992 initially proved ...”

“... and of the Norreys family who lived there. I leave it open on a chair hoping that Rupert will read it, Rycote Church being one of his favourite places. Also open on another chair is Richard Hoggart’s Promises to Keep, in which among other things he mentions not feeling he belongs to ‘the English Literary Happy Family’, as I hope neither do I.21 ...”

“... the philosophy of their time. But they differ in scope and emphasis, so it is well worthwhile to read them both. Benjamin Lipscomb is American; Clare Mac Cumhaill is Irish and Rachael Wiseman is British. His book covers a longer time span, and goes more deeply into the philosophical controversies in which the four were engaged, particularly the ...”