“... from what Persian print, from what arcane region of nights and days enclosed in yesterday, did the white deer come, the one I dreamed this morning? There’s a touch of the strained ripio in the rather uncalled for word encierra – why, except for the rhyme with Inglaterra, would our yesterdays lock time up rather than just contain it? – but the ...”

“... in places like Germany and France people still tend to drop to their knees before sages with white beards.This is gross, but not different in substance from what Elizabeth Costello’s sister, a nun in Africa, tells her about the value of literature: ‘I do not need to consult novels to know what pettiness, what baseness, what cruelty human beings are ...”

“... has since been reported that Downing Street is proposing a ‘Kyoto-lite’ agreement, whereby the White House would simply admit that climate change is a problem. In Canada, where I live, greenhouse gas emissions need to fall to 6 per cent below 1990 levels if we are to meet our Kyoto commitments. Canadian emissions have been rising steadily; to reach the ...”

“... in one of the armchairs and watched the ghostly shadows of coconut palms swaying on the room’s white plaster walls. In this room the hours would accumulate like grains of sand until they buried him.’ There is more, though. The King’s captors are (mainly) English, but the British Army which took his kingdom was largely Indian. Why would Indian soldiers ...”

“... and receives a letter from Lindbergh on the occasion. She is very happy to be invited to the White House when Ribbentrop comes to visit. Mr Roth leaves his job with Metropolitan Life Insurance rather than be transferred to Kentucky. Philip tries to run away from his collapsing world, and is kicked in the head by a horse – and, worse still, saved by a ...”

“... he fell down a ravine and lost consciousness (he had a heart condition), but Washington is a very white state, and some of his friends and family suspected racist foul play. At the time I doubted this; now I’m not so sure. One of his friends told a reporter that he hadn’t packed any provisions because he was only ‘going out for a couple hours … sort ...”

“... diasporic circles. The Jamaican poet Mutabaruka responded with his own performance poem, ‘White Man Country’, whose central refrain Johnson quoted in a piece in the Guardian in 2005: ‘it no good fi stay inna white man country too long.’ The piece is collected in Time Come, a selection of Johnson’s prose from ...”

“... you lose it? Not just language, but it. It.’ The space between their sense of a duty to a White who has endured such misfortune, and their response to one who looks, smells and behaves like a Black, is the screen on which the nature of racism is projected. But Malouf is more deeply concerned with the relation of humankind to the Australian ...”

“... who might be figures from the play, appear bound together by lines gouged in the dirty white paint – ‘modern cave paintings’, in the words of one contemporary critic. Themerson often included an upside-down figure representing herself in her paintings – as elemental a metaphor for the émigré experience as you could hope for. If her ...”

“... THE GOVERNMENT BELIEVES IN GOD – WHY DON’T YOU? a preacher was flanked by two young women in white spandex bodysuits with wings on their backs. More angels were roaming the floor. Queues at the signing booths led to authors of romance novels. The displays suggested that people want to know how to get along with their spouses, attend to their children’s ...”

“... with? If a musician listening to a tape can tell whether the fingers on the keys are black or white, should one tremble to acknowledge that the live voice, instantly distinguishable as male or female, leaves its imprint on the page? Russian is a language in which, given the laws of grammatical concordance, the lyrical ‘I’ must declare its gender all ...”

“... Richard Purdy (‘incapable of psychological insight into sexual matters’) and Michael Millgate (‘prim’), the devoted Hardy scholars who have given us studies of the work, an edition of the letters and several biographies. In an argument never explicitly stated in the book itself, but proclaimed in the press release and summarised on ...”

“... of touch’ (yeah) I am, will lose my seat, SDP wave of the future, usual balls. Actually, little White (Ambassador to Chile) isn’t so bad. A bit guarded, but that’s probably down to the secret FCO biog. which precedes me at all destinations. I am not getting on with his wife though. There is this certain type of woman who simultaneously demands that you ...”

“... Before he enters the sacred area around Mecca, a man dons the ihram, a robe composed of two white sheets – no special dress is prescribed for women pilgrims. The Kaaba in Mecca is an approximately cubical building with a black stone set in silver in one of its corners. The pilgrims circumambulate the Kaaba seven times. Then they run backwards and ...”

“... down being Irish.’ Meantime history went on. ‘Prexy had lunch with Roosevelt on a tray in the White House, 3.2 beer became legal, and a repeal of the Volstead Act was promised ... I feel doubtful about the names of Lenin and Trotsky: when did they enter my consciousness?’ Living miserably with Johnsrud in the vacation from Vassar, Mary was none the less ...”