“... of the gallant South’, as Billie Holiday might have described it, was open to anyone who hated black people and Jews, from members of the Ku Klux Klan to neo-Nazis. Emboldened by having an ally in the highest office in the land, they came with Confederate flags, swastikas, medieval-looking wooden shields, torches and, of course, guns. They came to ...”

“... But yellow and green were there too, as Van Gogh noted, and orange and red; oh, and blue and black. The tops were taken off all the tubes, and colour seemed to get its freedom and intensity back: richnesses that had been suppressed – either by self-censorship or academic dictate – since the days of Delacroix. No one did colour more blatantly and more ...”

“... what I yearned for was truth.’Enninful took the top job at Vogue in 2017 and became the first black editor in the magazine’s history. Ending the overwhelming whiteness on its pages was central to his pitch: ‘We would not be exclusive and proscriptive,’ he writes, ‘but inclusive, on every page … Diversity and inclusivity were at the forefront of ...”

“... On 5 October 1990, Britain entered the ERM: on 16 September 1992, ‘Black Wednesday’, Britain left the ERM. These two events and the years between them were crucial in recent British politics. They are the source of the divisions in the contemporary Tory Party and all the leading participants are obliged to state and restate what they said and did then in much the same way that the members of an earlier Tory generation had to spell out the position they’d taken over Munich ...”

“... minorities – no Jews, no Poles, no Italians – and had nominated only one other, the hapless Michael Dukakis. But this was the response of a baby boomer, when in fact one of the remarkable things about the Obama campaign was that it wasn’t about race at all. Obama, though he studiously copied his speaking style from King and other preachers, was not ...”

“... and hold out a tiny metal tray onto which fell the coins he could empty into the pockets of his black jacket without having the skin on his hands participate in the joy and humiliation. Sometimes showing a yellowed concert programme, worn out in the folds, hard to unfold, with his still-recognisable photo on it, with the word Wien underlined in red by ...”

“... and on his thumb.He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,the blade of which is almost worn away.If he was in a 19th-century painting, he would have had some splendid allegorical or mythological label, but here he’s just a quiet and slightly sad man (the phrases seem to proceed, too, in short hacking ...”

“... the 1960s like for you?’ ‘I didn’t even know they were the 1960s.’ Is Sunset Boulevard a black comedy? ‘No. Just a picture.’ ‘What’s the difference between “inspired by” and a “remake”?’ ‘“Inspired by” means no credit.’ Has he mellowed? ‘I see fewer people now. That’s the way I have mellowed.’ Telling (once again) the ...”

“... the bold lettering VENEREAL DISEASES, a colleague came to the desk and Charles shut the directory. Michael said, ‘Have you spoken to anyone here this morning yet?’ ‘No.’ Michael was American, too. They worked in an American investment company. ‘No one’s told you about Harold Cripps?’ ‘No.’ ...”

“... Mengin’s ghastly-glorious 1877 painting of the poet, bare-breasted beneath a swirling black sky, gazing mournfully down at the Aegean.) Watching Prins make this particular plunge, Post-Modern tresses lifting in the wind, is to be struck again by how difficult it is, in life or literary criticism, to avoid the classic Sapphic double-bind: take the ...”

“... Paris and London, Peter Hall edits an SSRC Working Party’s Reports on The Inner City in Context, Michael Harloe, in New Perspectives in Urban Change and Conflict, edits papers given at the third Centre for Environmental Studies Conference in 1979, David Donnison reflects on his time as Chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission in The Politics of ...”

“... Briefly during the second act Michael Frayn’s stage-play, Make and Break, transcends its setting, a Frankfurt trade fair, touching on a general gloom. Mrs Rogers is treating Garrard, a goatish sales rep, to the fruits of Buddhism. It is late in the day. Elsewhere assignations are arranged, faces stuffed, drinks swilled ...”

“... Michael Burn assumes in this book that the name of Richard Hillary means nothing to present-day readers, so the reviewer had better follow his practice and provide biographical details. Although he was born in Australia shortly after the end of the First World War, Hillary came to England at an early age and had a thoroughly English upper middle-class education – prep school, followed by public school (Shrewsbury) and Oxford (Trinity College ...”

“... Association a letter from the Solicitor-General to the selfsame Secretary of State for Defence (Michael Heseltine). Neither the Solicitor-General nor Heseltine knew of the leak. The letter, like the document about the Cruise missiles demo, was entirely secret. Though neither document was a threat to national security, both were plainly covered by the terms ...”

“... On this level, their activities echo the pre-pubertal world of Our Gang. Behind the metaphorical black mask there is an organisation through which leading politicians, but chiefly ministers, communicate. It is a process by which, albeit in roundabout style, they submit their thoughts to the litmus test of public opinion. What offends the critics is that none ...”