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“... suicide of his wife, which apparently was the result of an affair he had been conducting. In 1993, Michael Mates left the government after disclosures that he had sent gifts and messages of support to the businessman Asil Nadir. Norman Lamont caused an uproar over his use of public money to evict a tenant from his property. Other lesser Tories, such as Mrs ...”

“... Is there anything stranger than a pop star out of time? Before Elvis Presley, before Michael Jackson, there was Al Jolson – ‘the most popular entertainer of the first half of the 20th century,’ as Michael Rogin describes him. Eyes wide and mouth agape, arms outstretched and face painted black, Jolson concludes his performance in The Jazz Singer (1927) down on one knee, serenading the delighted actress who plays his mother in a voice as strong and piercing as a foghorn ...”

“... a tremendous blow-out, complete with wines and cigars, at the White Lion in Cerrigydrudion. But Michael Sampson, Anthony’s father, who had scattered the ashes nine times over the mountain, looks cold and ill at ease in the faded press photographs. And the Rai’s widow was not present. Soon afterwards an Aunt Mary, never met before, came to visit the ...”

“... to be regarded as merely one of Auden’s acolytes; two, that he may be seen as precursor to the young poets in Northern Ireland who have been making a stir, if not a Renaissance, since 1968. The first reason is cogent. MacNeice’s work didn’t issue from Auden’s overcoat; it is time to remove it from the simplifications of literary history and ...”

“... and autumn of last year. The biographers are Norman Sherry, Anthony Mockler, Leopoldo Duran and Michael Shelden. The actual information they provide must by now be common knowledge among those who are at all interested in Greene, including those who have simply read the many highly communicative reviews, and in the basic respect of the facts imparted there ...”

“... The invitation to irony runs out fast, but the film does a reasonably good job of evoking the young Evita, the kid who runs off with a lugubrious tango singer (played by Jimmy Nail as if the mourning had started already), and takes on the big city. Madonna has all the bounce that is needed, and manages to combine an effect of ruthlessness with an effect ...”

“... of old age are likely to be dead or very tired or just reluctant to discuss the matter with clever young interlocutors.’ ‘Have had’ is quite marvellous, and Kermode acknowledges without irony that ‘much of the best thinking on this subject comes from philosophically sophisticated but honourably ignorant juniors.’ There was Plato, for instance; and ...”

“... of the engagement and it took the appeals of Maesa and Soaemias, as well as the sight of the young Heliogabalus on horseback brandishing a sword, to rally the rebels. Macrinus lost his nerve and fled the field. His reign was as good as over and the new regime was settled in Antioch by the end of the next day. Macrinus’​ partisans among the provincial ...”

“... in the remoter areas of Xinjiang, but fewer major incidents were reported until, in July 2009, young Uyghurs protesting against attacks on Uyghur workers in south China clashed with groups of Han residents in Ürümqi, which had escaped most of the violent conflict of the previous two decades. The Ürümqi Han demanded action from the Beijing ...”

“... is to some extent disparaged. I’ve always been in two minds about Piper, liking him when I was young with his paintings ‘modern’ but representational enough to be acceptable, a view I trotted out years later when Romola Christopherson was taking me round Downing Street. ‘I suppose for Mrs Thatcher,’ I sneered, ‘Piper is the acceptable face of ...”

“... Can you tell the difference in principle between these two leaks? In 1983, a young civil servant at the Ministry of Defence was so outraged by her Secretary of State’s plans to head off a demonstration against Cruise missiles that she copied the relevant document and delivered it in an anonymous envelope to the Guardian newspaper ...”

“... is a fragile thing. ‘Don’t talk to me about poverty and all that, please,’ the bright young trainee at the Indian Express admonishes me. ‘Every country has that. After all, India has survived as a democracy. Isn’t that great? Even Time magazine said so.’ It would, wouldn’t it? There hasn’t been a great deal of talk in the ...”

“... at the time. Stamm’s second novel, Unformed Landscape (translated like Stamm’s other books by Michael Hofmann), told the story of a 28-year-old Norwegian woman called Kathrine who leaves her second husband and son and, dipping below the Arctic circle for the first time in her life, travels first to Jutland, then to Paris and eventually to Boulogne in ...”

“... exception. I’ve been getting older for quite some time now – I mean older as in no longer young, too old to die young – but it doesn’t seem to be one of those things you get used to. On the contrary, the older I get the less used to it I seem to be. The past stretches away from the present, elongating behind ...”

“... David Lurie. But perhaps Youth is being taken too seriously, and we are meant to mock this grim young man and the Conradian title that portentously frames his rite of passage. A good deal depends on whether we read Youth as fiction or autobiography. It was published in the UK without a subtitle, and with a blurb suggesting it is meant to be read in the same ...”