“... terrorism and Communism. With the compliance (not to say indifference) of the higher-ups in the White House and in the State and Defence Departments, the country’s foreign policy has been handed over to these new warriors, who see nothing wrong with committing the economy and national security to a state of permanent war. Every one of the main actors in ...”

“... of United Biscuits, which gave £632,500 to the Party during the Thatcher years); Sir Gordon White (head of the US arm of Hanson, which gave £652,000 to the Tories and £100,000 to the Centre for Policy Studies in 1981-90); Sir Jeffrey Sterling (head of P & O, which gave £370,000 during the Thatcher years); Peter Palumbo (Chairman of the Arts Council ...”

“... part we were finally installed on seats in front of the pavilion, the soothing sight of green and white displayed before us. Although hardly an enthusiast by temperament, Frank was a cricket-lover, always reading the scores in the sports pages and watching the TV highlights. He had played regularly while a lecturer at Reading in the 1950s (‘I was never any ...”

“... Boulez observed that Messiaen practised juxtaposition rather than composition, he had a point. As Christopher Dingle argues in his contribution to Messiaen in Context, Messiaen was ‘primarily an orchestral composer’, ‘implicitly orchestrating his music even when no orchestra was involved’. The piano and organ were the pillars of his ...”

“... of the war on terror and its advocates (one of his early books was subtitled ‘The Trial of Christopher Hitchens’), then of the economic austerity that followed the 2008 crash. Like Hitchens, Seymour is a former Trotskyite; he left the Socialist Workers Party in 2013 when it imploded over allegations of sexual assault by a senior member. Unlike ...”

“... Another time when he was home from college on a spring or winter break he called my father from a White Castle hamburger joint and told the old man he’d got himself into a situation with a dozen or so greasers and could my father maybe drive over and rescue him. Of course, my father loved shit like this and dragged me along, aged 14 or so. Well, we get ...”

“... where Israeli propaganda seems to lead a life of its own. Whereas, in 1975, Michael Adams and Christopher Mayhew were able to write about a coherent but unstated policy of unofficial British press censorship, according to which unpleasant truths about Zionism were systematically suppressed, the situation is not nearly as obvious so far as the British ...”

“... of the art world’, the letter was signed by Marina Warner, Michael Craig-Martin, Christopher Frayling and George Melly, also several artists and dealers, and as with all round-robins it wasn’t perhaps the letter any one of them would have written individually. Still, as a tactic, it showed blessed unworldliness, as surprising as it is ...”

“... to publish. ‘My book problems are complicated and I would like to ask your advice,’ he told Christopher Ricks. ‘My new book is a small one, some eighty poems … the story of changing marriages, not a malice or sensation, far from it, but necessarily, according to my peculiar talent, very personal. Lizzie is naturally very much against it. I am ...”

“... friend is what subtle Prudence Pelham (again) registered after one visit to Sidmouth: ‘I saw the white emptiness of your glass & thought it would never be filled.’ There was something of Prince Mishkin about Jones: his confounding candour, his obstacle-like presence in the room. If you could not marry him it was unclear what finally was to be done with ...”

“... in 1974, crammed with photographs, illustrations and comic strips, compiled and annotated by Christopher Gray. Years later I learned that Gray had rubbed shoulders with McLaren in a Notting Hill group called King Mob, a unofficial affiliate to the Situationist International. Some say it was Gray who first suggested what a wheeze it would be to create ...”

“... and Monday) and read the whole of Bridge with Rixi. I had just started Classics on Cassette by Christopher Grier when I was overwhelmed by a feeling of restlessness and began to wander round the room. I still had nearly half an hour in which to explore The Ground Hostess. There was more to see than I had realised at first. A blank television screen hung ...”

“... blindly to power and authority’.This will not do. They were ‘ordinary men’ – the title of Christopher Browning’s indispensable book – who shot, day after day, at close range, men, women and children by the hundreds of thousands. The social psychology of the past three decades seems to belie the notion that a deviant personality is necessary to ...”

“... fingering him as the person behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who in 2008 published a white paper describing a ‘peer-to-peer electronic cash system’ – a technology Satoshi went on to develop as bitcoin. Reading the articles on his laptop, Wright knew his old life was over. By this point, cameras and reporters were outside his former home and ...”

“... is bilge’ (the German quark, which has since made its way into English, literally means ‘soft white cheese’). But whatever the conditions in which she found herself – in Warsaw, she was one of 14 political prisoners crammed into a single cell – she never lost her fervour: her joy, as she put it, amid the horrors of the world. ‘My inner ...”