“... because that’s the effect Sontag still has on me 15 years after her death, and nothing less will do. Born Sue Rosenblatt, a rabbity name that would never do on a marquee, she chose to be known as Susan Sontag (taking the surname of her stepfather, her biological father having died when she was five). ‘To write, I must ...”

“... and their agents have burrowed under Chelsea and Kensington for generations, commissioning Dr No fantasies of swimming pools and cinemas and state of the art gymnasia in which no uninvited civilian will ever set foot. These windowless sets, finessed by fashionable architects, are like parodies of facilities promised for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic ...”

“... hyperreality in Baudrillard’s sense – something that is more real than real, a hall of mirrors in which the separation between the world and its representations dissolves? Or perhaps all of the above?The ‘rich confusion’ of American identity, as Baldwin put it, has given rise to endless attempts at definition, by foreign observers as ...”

“... implied by the enterprise, is the contention that women understand women writers better than men do. Other things being equal, readers of the same sex will be closer to the meaning of Jane Austen, for instance, than their male counterparts. Where there is a choice, women’s commentary is given priority in the attached bibliographical notes. They know ...”

“... moved to ardent xenophobia by the Royal Jubilees. Such divisions did exist and have continued to do so, as is clear from the degree of conscientious objection during two world wars, and from the polarisations evoked by the Suez and Falklands expeditions. The problem of national identity is more complex than this, however, being the result of ambivalence ...”

“... wait upon us; men’s lives hang in the balance; men’s hopes call upon us to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try? The new stewardship of daring was to become the hallmark of modern Presidential politics. The aim was to overcome the hobbling lethargy of a government too divided to govern in a new century in ...”

“... activity has been recorded: the Lamberts were, after all, marginal figures – over-talented de-spoilers of their own talent. Their achievements look smaller with the lapse of time, and if it were not for Constant’s half-dozen really distinguished musical works, Motion would hardly have a book at all. Even when reading about Constant’s development ...”

“... of Burrinchini. The project to which the efforts of Burrinchini are addressed – truly his raison d’être – is to retrieve a historical account of how ‘things political’ were pondered by a number of British writers during the 19th century. If this seems a cumbrous way of putting it, why not simply say that this is the history of Political ...”

“... modern reader want to dive under the bedclothes too. As an account of what showbiz publicity can do for a girl his book is unbeatable. If it’s not always solid on ascertainable fact – ‘Charles Reade, the famous author of The Cricket on the Hearth’ is a particularly sportive invention – who cares? It’s the myth that matters. Harriet Smithson was ...”

“... 1977. In the mid 1970s​ , Iran started buying nudes. Some were abstract nudes, such as Willem de Kooning’s Woman III, with her yellow hair and emphatic yellow breasts and an expression that suggests some bemusement at de Kooning’s ‘melodrama of vulgarity’. Some featured nudity as part of a mysterious mise en ...”

“... on existentialism and phenomenology edited by R.D. Laing, complete with a eulogistic preface by David Cooper (the South African-born psychiatrist who coined the term ‘anti-psychiatry’). But readers who have to rely on an English translation have had to wait almost four decades to get their hands on a complete version. In important respects the new ...”

“... songs.I had watched 1776 on Election Day in 2012, when Barack Obama was re-elected, but failed to do so again in 2016; perhaps that was where everything went off the rails. To watch 1776 as the votes are counted seems like a harmless tradition, if a little bit twee – a little bit neolib, perhaps, a little bit brunch. But on 3 November 2020 what began in ...”

“... about the Bonhomme Richard. I know that it was originally a French merchant vessel called the Duc de Duras; that it was loaned to the fledgling US navy; and that it took part in the War of Independence. I know it was 152 feet long, weighed 998 tonnes and carried 42 guns. But at the time this replica was created in 1975, I knew only that it was my dad’s ...”

“... cardboard boxes, hens and on one occasion a goat. When one eventually arrived in Venice, where I’d never been, in the late afternoon it did seem like an achievement: one came out of the station to find the canals not sequestered away in some tourist area but there on the steps of the station itself, Venice the only place that lived up to its publicity. On ...”

“... Tombs do not rank high in the history of modern architecture. Only two grave monuments in London have been designated as Grade One Listed Buildings: the icon of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, and the aggressively idiosyncratic construction that is the memorial to the family of Sir John Soane (‘architect to the Bank of England &c &c &c’, as the inscription proclaims) in the burial ground next to Old St Pancras Church – the romantic spot where Shelley first caught sight of Mary Godwin, but now part of some lugubrious gardens sandwiched between the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, the mainline railway and St Pancras Coroner’s Court ...”