“... mid-1950s against anything even faintly obscene, a campaign that among other cases saw the artist Donald McGill, king of the seaside postcard, briefly banged up for his depiction of an outsize, almost vertical stick of rock’. How far this prudishness in the public culture was mirrored in private life is hard to gauge, but Kynaston presents enough evidence ...”

“... now making their way to North America and Europe. In selling his wall on the border with Mexico, Donald Trump likes to say: ‘Ask Israel, the wall works.’ Camps are bulldozed in Calais, thousands of people drown in the Mediterranean, and the Australian government detains survivors of wars and despotic regimes in camps on the remote islands of Nauru and ...”

“... Haiti in spite of many assurances from the IDB. Even so it was not until last month that one could read in a US daily newspaper that the aid freeze might have contributed to the overthrow of the penniless Haitian government. On 7 March, the Boston Globe wrote: Today, Haiti’s government, which serves eight million people, has an annual budget of about $300 ...”

“... Just before the 2024 US presidential election, Rogan put out a supine three-hour interview with Donald Trump, who delivered his usual portion of lies, idiocies and bluster. Six years earlier, one of Rogan’s guests had been Penrose. The tweedily attired scientist didn’t patronise and the sweatshirted interviewer was duly star-struck: ‘I’m a big fan ...”

“... of murder’. Auden had further reasons to rebuke himself. The final lines of ‘Spain, 1937’ read: ‘History to the defeated/May say Alas but cannot help or pardon.’ In a foreword to the 1966 edition of his Collected Shorter Poems, Auden wrote: ‘To say this is to equate goodness with success. It would have been bad enough if I had ever held this ...”

“... passing that invite further reflection. For example, we learn that the Medea was the most widely read of the plays of Euripides in the 18th century, and we may well wonder how a ‘feminist’ drama was interpreted or used in teaching. In the same period, politically radical students refused to powder their wigs, and the significance of this as a symbol of ...”

“... said, ‘are like young girls and roses; they last as long as they last.’ More than a hint of Donald Trump in all this. He actually wanted World War Two to go on longer, so that the rapidly growing Free French forces could earn a greater share of the glory. The sacred egoism of the nation was all that mattered, and what sustained it was a triple link ...”

“... Its precursor, air force space command, was set up in 1982. In 2001, a commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld concluded that it was being neglected, and recommended setting up a separate ‘military department for space’, something that has remained a goal of American generals ever since. But even some military space enthusiasts thought the 2019 ...”

“... on 6 March killed around 140 HTS personnel. They seem to have believed the misinformation they’d read online, that other countries were about to intervene. The next day, government reinforcements arrived in large numbers. Ali disappeared into a quieter part of the city. Suliman had no urge to pick up a weapon again, not even in defence, and stayed indoors ...”

“... and plays, to the monumental Princeton University Press Coleridge. Coleridge’s verse can now be read in full, and in a form worthy of his best writing. The poems are beautifully presented; the brief preliminary introduction to each is sensible, as is the annotation at the foot of the page, and the bibliographical commentary that closes the volumes. This is ...”

“... you from serving on a jury, without explanation. If you try to get a job, you’re likely to read in the employer’s advertisement a warning that felons are not welcome; this is perfectly legal. This cycle of punishment, shaming and exclusion all adds up to a more or less permanent condition of internal exile – what Orlando Patterson, in his 1982 book ...”

“... interpret these things. We are also familiar with the idea, developed powerfully in philosophy by Donald Davidson, that we could not come to understand these people without building into our interpretation at a structural level some assumptions about the ways in which their experience and thoughts resemble ours: that we must interpret what they say, for ...”

“... in 1932, A Novelette and Other Prose by William Carlos Williams, and two books by Pound: How to Read and The Spirit of Romance. It was while the Oppens were in Europe that the word ‘Objectivist’ came into existence. Pound had foisted Zukofsky on Harriet Monroe as a guest editor of Poetry for an issue which appeared in February 1931. Carl Rakosi, another ...”

“... to work, have fun, and live safely. I peered through the glass entrance doors. Another poster read connected through joy. A quizzical security guard wandered towards me. I hadn’t told Mondelez I was coming. I made myself scarce.Just behind the factory, the remains of the old runway are still there. Driving along the road on the far side of the plant you ...”

“... disclosure of a conflict of interest, he is a mere member – of the Defense Policy Board under Donald Rumsfeld. Another member of the study group was Douglas Feith, now the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Policy. The advice that Perle, Feith and other American friends of Israel’s Likud irredentists gave Netanyahu in 1996 became the Bush ...”