“... to control violent crises in the Mediterranean periphery. In each case, there was a supervening international context for the fall of the old Republic: the end of European colonialism in the case of France, and the end of the Cold War in the case of Italy. Umberto Bossi’s Lega Lombarda, the battering-ram that weakened the struts of the traditional party ...”

“... been awarded the Geschwister-Scholl Prize – named after the founders of the anti-Nazi resistance group White Rose – had suddenly become an antisemite. The accusation, it transpired, had little to do with BDS activism and was based on a wilful misreading of Mbembe’s 2016 essay ‘The Society of Enmity’, which argued that Israel is a settler colony and ...”

“... success: he has (with a little help from his partners in Opec) secured a threefold increase in the international oil price, from 9 to 27 dollars a barrel. In consequence, he has a little breathing space, despite the disaster of the floods. Chávez has also given a few flamboyant signals. During his first month in office he sent a friendly note to the ...”

“... to be an invention of David Peterley’s, and who is now recognised as Australia’s first poet of international significance) may be checked against a long manuscript in the Mitchell Library at Sydney – by Richard Pennington. Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies did take the part of Etain in Rutland Boughton’s opera, The Immortal Hour in 1922, with Peter Shelving’s ...”

“... remarkable. Nobody wants to be left out of anything. Nearly two years ago the M-19, a subversive group which might be said to represent magical realism in politics, kidnapped the Conservative politician Alvaro Gomez. The action was conceived as a blow against the ‘oligarchy’ which would somehow result in the fusion of the guerrillas and the Armed Forces ...”

“... the killings. Two years later, five supporters of the National Socialist Underground (NSU), as the group called itself, appeared in court. By then it had become clear that various Verfassungsschutz agencies and informers had been in contact with the NSU but had failed to inform the police, which might have stopped the killings. There are lingering questions ...”

“... relief by the sight of Odenigbo’s home, where his revolutionary speeches, often recited to a group of sympathetic intellectuals, are burnished by the scholarly authority embodied in his large library with its high, ‘piercingly white’ ceilings and what Ugwu sees as its ‘alien furniture’. Both of these novels reject the ‘single story’ of Africa ...”

“... claimed Birmingham was a ‘no-go zone’ for non-Muslims, and that Birmingham’s schools were in crisis, especially Park View. Trustees resigned, staff resigned, others are still suspended pending disciplinary hearings. Pupils had cameras stuffed into their faces when they turned up to sit their GCSEs: results, which in 2013 had been excellent, dropped ...”

“... puzzling timidity culminated in his supine response to ‘deficit hawks’ during the debt ceiling crisis of the summer. Recently, Obama’s spine has begun to stiffen in response to the Occupy movement. He has finally started to make a populist critique of systemic inequality, but it remains to be seen how sustained or effective this new stance will ...”

“... of citoyen. All citizens were to have a say in government. But if everyone is to be included in a group, someone has first to decide who constitutes this group. And this necessarily implies that some are not members. The concept of the ‘citizen’, in other words, excludes every bit as much as it includes, and in the two ...”

“... the scene of a late-night car crash in Havana. He was arrested three months later at José Martí International Airport and sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter. According to the Serbian TV channel Insajder, the highest levels of the Serbian state lobbied the Cuban government for Radoman’s extradition – Montenegro doesn’t have an embassy ...”

“... will fail to meet the new settlement requirements. But they won’t solve Bulgaria’s demographic crisis: most won’t return home but will remain among the 2.5 million Bulgarians working abroad (3.5 million work at home). What their departure will mean for Britain – which faces labour shortages on its roads, in its fields, restaurants and hospitals ...”

“... has brought civilisation to its knees, and that Western society faces a total and debilitating crisis as a result of materialism, scientism, individualism and rationalism. Nothing less than the abandonment of Enlightenment thought and the wholesale reorientation of politics around constitutive norms of community can save us, they say. Asked, however, for ...”

“... satisfying and at times very insightful. The descriptions he gives of the rise and progress of the international student movement and of feminism are sober, if only moderately enthusiastic in tone, particularly when he has to keep reminding us that traditional labour – from steel workers to telephone operators – declined in importance, as did the ...”

“... In the spring of 1966, China seemed a stable, disciplined and united nation. It was led by a group of men whose comradeship had been forged by the Long March, by Japanese aggression and by civil war. They had made a revolution and then boldly undertaken to remake a society of 600 million people. Their instrument of rule and regeneration was arguably the ...”