“... Fellows of Harvard College and the companion case Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court of the United States outlawed racial ‘affirmative action’ as it has been practised at institutions of higher education in America since the 1970s. Affirmative action gives a boost to certain categories of applicant for ...”

“... of John Osborne, Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin; the libertarian narcissism of the 1960s; Paul Watson’s 1974 BBC series about the Wilkins clan, The Family, ‘reality television’ in general and Big Brother in particular; the Bloomsburyite economist J.M. Keynes (whose name Blond revealingly pronounced as ‘Keens’ in a televised debate that I ...”

“... local opposition. Walter Gropius gathered an extraordinary group around him: Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Marcel Breuer, Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy. The Bauhaus had its internal divisions and idiosyncrasies, but the six years it was located in Weimar were some of its most successful. In August and September 1923, a large ...”

“... opposition, it was this fear that drove a motley crew of deputies – including Bertrand Barère, Paul Barras, Jacques-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne, Jean-Marie Collot d’Herbois, Lazare Carnot and Jean-Lambert Tallien – to topple him. They did so by means of a hasty coup on 9 Thermidor, the day after his speech. The key events are well known. Robespierre’s ...”

“... Democratic Unionist Party, Jeffrey Donaldson, instructed the first minister of Northern Ireland, Paul Givan, to resign. This automatically also removed the deputy first minister, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, from office, effectively bringing about the collapse of the power-sharing administration. Donaldson claimed to be protesting at the failure of the ...”

“... the American Revolution remain a conundrum. Why did the colonies that had supported Britain in its North American struggle against France between 1754 and 1763 turn so quickly against Britain’s relatively benign parliamentary government? Understandably enough, British attempts after 1763 to make the colonists contribute to the costs of imperial defence ...”

“... our last conversation, I often find myself nostalgically drifting back to West Parade. The hellish North Sea wind tore through the third-floor apartment every day and I thought: wonderful, only lunatics would attend a university in Norwich. We had one of those rusted paraffin heaters, a huge, clanging metal beast with German markings that defeated its intended ...”

“... What use was selective pressure for the evolution of an instinct to fly south in the autumn and north in the spring before the evolution of navigation? What use would the evolution of an instinct for navigation by the stars have been to African birds before the evolution of an instinct to seek better feeding grounds in Northern Europe in the summer? How ...”

“... that they were not training manuals for life.’ At eight he was sent away to prep school, North Foreland Court in Kent, which ‘took seriously its duty of preparing small boys for life’s unpleasantness’, and where he was predictably miserable. He went from there to Eton, at a time – the 1960s – when it was still turning out ‘prefects rather ...”

“... if Northrop Frye played video games. It’s true that it’s difficult to imagine the doyen of North American literary criticism with his pouchy features shivering over the levers while the reflected white-line paddles of Pong tracked up and down his spectacle lenses; yet when it – the first true video game – hit the arcades, Frye was just sixty. Such ...”

“... Town. So I went to visit it. When you walk in, you wonder if you’ve somehow wandered into a North London satellite of Tate Modern. Unlike most receptions, Reception here appears eager to offer you a decent reception, and the building is full of colour, light, optimism and efficiency. People smile. It’s a palace, actually, or a modern church of the ...”

“... to such a queer sense of authority and religious cheek. Strange marvellous black nights of the north Midlands, with the gas-light hissing in the chapel, and the roaring of the strong-voiced colliers. Popular religion: a religion of self-glorification and power, forever! and of darkness. No wailing ‘Lead kindly Light’ about it. Or this, which the ...”

“... matters have been improving. In 1980, there was even a small surplus, only partly owing to North Sea oil. As for food prices, 90 per cent of the rise since 1973 is due to Western inflation and soaring energy prices. What’s hit the British economy is not Community membership, but world slump. It would be worse outside. So, patiently, the Community’s ...”

“... was born Guido di Pietro around 1395 in a hamlet in the Mugello, a region thirty kilometres north-east of Florence. By 1417 he was in Florence itself and already working as a dipintore, according to a document recording his admission to one of the city’s lay confraternities. Around 1420, he entered the Dominican Order, soon after taking the name ...”

“... essay about learning to use a sextant. First he determines the latitude and longitude of his North Kensington flat, then buys a boat. His account of the working of the instrument is absolutely his own yet he probably couldn’t have done it had not Kipling shown him how. It should be clear from this that Raban is never guilty of supposing that he can use ...”