“... But no culture matches Catholic and Orthodox Christianity for its fascination with what Caroline Walker Bynum calls ‘holy matter’. In Bynum’s account, relics of the saints bear witness to the central paradox of Christian materiality. If the changeless God could become incarnate in corruptible matter, then matter itself must be capable of the holy. Yet ...”

“... Bergman), were challenged. The screening at the Italian Cultural Institute, attended by Muriel Walker, who had been part of the production, and who brought a spellbinding sense of witness, confirmed an episode that was vaguely remembered but legendary. Soon afterwards, the presentation of Antonioni’s Il Grido above a hip pizza house next to the Olympic ...”

“... teenage darts prodigy, who stepped onto the world stage this winter as if from the pages of a Martin Amis novel, O’Sullivan’s prodigious talent made him a fan favourite as soon as he turned professional. His personality – anguished, combative, romantic – has only sustained his fame since. His fickleness, too, is legendary. During the 2010 World ...”

“... Cary Grant is so central to Hawks’s work. But notice how far Rio Bravo shows us a Wayne and Dean Martin hardly recognised by other directors. And do not forget the list of people either discovered or brought to new life by Hawks: Louise Brooks (chosen by Pabst for Pandora’s Box after seeing A Girl in Every Port): Boris Karloff; Carole Lombard; Rita ...”

“... this would come to the surface in the form of wild applause for union-busting governors like Scott Walker of Wisconsin or Chris Christie of New Jersey. Imagine Nikki Haley’s joy when she saw the first Boeing built in South Carolina roll down the tarmac ‘surrounded by six thousand non-union employees’. That Monday night, after the protest, I met two local ...”

“... to end,’ the gung-ho Colonel Kilgore played by Robert Duvall says in the film. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) later repeats the line, thinking how happy the young men travelling upriver with him will be when that day comes, and they can go home. ‘The trouble is,’ Willard adds, ‘I had been back there, and I knew it just didn’t exist any more.’ The ...”

“... hundred artefacts were sent from Tervuren to North America for a touring show, organised by the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis; among them was Ne Kuko’s emblematic figure. In 1973, Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire (as he had renamed the DRC), insisted that he wanted them back. Between 1976 and 1982, once the term ‘restitution’ had been ruled ...”

“... and she did not find the process easy, but then she seems to have been overtaken with what Martin Amis (apropos of Brideshead Revisited) has called the ‘great speed, unfamiliar excitement, and … deep conviction’ one needs in order to construct ‘the really good bad book’. The achievement left her exhausted, creatively beached. In John Galt she ...”

“... of national self-sufficiency? Is it still? Rover, Morris, Austin, Triumph, Vauxhall, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Mini, Land Rover: when we hear the names of these firms, we think of the cars they made, and of cars driven by parents or grandparents, sisters or old boyfriends. But we also think of the places in Britain where the cars were built, places ...”

“... is even better. Lea as ley, it always had that feel. A route out. A river track that walked the walker, a wet road. The Lea fed our Hackney dreaming: a water margin. On any morning when the city was squeezing too hard, you could get your hit of rus in urbe. Hackney Marshes giving way to the woodyards of Lea Bridge Road, to Springfield Park; reservoir ...”

“... without hating people who wave a differently-coloured one. Conversation at home: M: When’s that Martin Amis book coming out, the one about Stalin being a bad man? Me: Not sure. A Waterstone’s bloke told me he’d seen it in some list and it had one of those one-word titles. M: Stalinbad. 14 June. Last games of the first round, and the show goes on with ...”

“... was reported that he was to receive an annual salary of £20,000. He later became Lord Howe. Peter Walker’s resignation in May 1990 was followed by an explosion of career activity. He took directorships with the Welsh off-shoot of N.M. Rothschild, the bank used by the government for the sell-off of British Gas, and with British Gas itself, at a salary ...”

“... the chunky brown stuff looks like vomit. ‘Just globs of death out there,’ one diver, Al Walker, says in a Southern accent. ‘Oil so thick it blocks out almost all the light below,’ says another diver. An AP photograph by Dave Martin shows one of the gentle little waves of the Gulf Coast in close-up, a wave on ...”

“... would seem’, ‘which is to say’, ‘to be sure’), to rank with Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, Willie Morris’s North toward Home, and other urban romances of the ardent outsider whose eyes are on the prize. Still, it’s handy to have it back in print after its long stay in limbo, for documentary purposes. It gives virgin readers an ...”

“... something that the social at its highest serves to nourish and protect, as the parent the child. Martin Buber called it the ‘I:Thou relation’. The two kings as children loved each other. Under the frigid social discourse lies the necessity that empowers it, the human innocence of loving. But the second courtier, Camillo, makes it plain how appallingly ...”