“... has been that democracy in Iraq primarily benefits the Shia, the religious parties and Iran. The White House and Downing Street aren’t very happy about this, but there isn’t much they can do about it, despite their manoeuvring. As American and British power declines, Iraq’s neighbours are making plans to increase the level of their intervention. Iran ...”

“... The Interior Ministry is currently suing the Foreign Ministry for the cost of four blue and white police cars shot to pieces by suspicious Foreign Ministry guards. Suicide bombers have used stolen police cars in the past. American Humvees carry placards in Arabic and English warning drivers to stay 100 metres away or they may open fire. They don’t ...”

“... unexpected: O but there is a laughing spring Even little men see that A running through the white board towns signing A light that glints from painted steeples A minnow-silver rain Of all the clouds contain Spring crackling its buds Every instant a remark Each brisk spanked cloud that scuds A brief out from the invulnerable sun The sea in May The ...”

“... and was self-isolating in Dover.I first visited Thanington early last year as an example of a poor white working-class district in which the majority had voted for Britain to leave the EU. It has a mixture of council and private housing and an estimated population of 2758 – low enough to allow its problems to be seen in some detail. Residents admitted that ...”

“... Patrick Cosgrave is a well-known political journalist who has been within and without the Conservative Party for many years. He has played Boswell to Margaret Thatcher’s Johnson, having come in from the cold, as it were, of the Heath years. He has now written a book about Peter Carrington, who resigned, of course, as Foreign Minister after the Argentines invaded the Falklands in April 1982 ...”

“... called Winston Lord quickly got into a limousine with Zhou and set off, leaving Bob Haldeman, the White House chief of staff, frantic with worry over their security. They entered Mao’s house, finding it ‘simple and unimposing’, as Kissinger noted, and with a ping-pong table in the hall. Then they encountered Mao himself: shuffling, speaking with ...”

“... down another field, diagonally, this time accompanied by a blue tractor. This pairing of views in Patrick Keiller’s 2010 film Robinson in Ruins – glimpsed again as part of his current installation at Tate Britain (on display until 14 October) – is almost too typical to be true and must, among other things, be a joke at his own expense. Since the early ...”

“... a blind man who is also a midget and pulls a little cart. He was looking very closely at his white stick. Though I have found it very hard to convince Carmen Callil – who believes that, since she occasionally sees me out in the evening, I am out in the evening all day – I am actually on my own all day every day. And since I am single, this would mean ...”

“... of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a bony-faced, dark-suited man, recently imported from the White House press office. He makes little secret of the fact that his job is to present a picture of Iraq that will get President Bush re-elected. He jogs around the heavily protected US enclave, known as the Green Zone, wearing a T-shirt with ‘Bush and Cheney ...”

“... Force patrol ships – decked out with high-tech radar sensors and painted navy grey – hug the White Cliffs in pursuit of dinghies carrying immigrants from France: a defiant image of Britain repelling an external threat. From the top of one of the hills overlooking the town you look down on the Eastern Docks, where ten thousand lorries stream in and out ...”

“... around this time, and was invalided home in 1792.) In recognition of the racial crime on which the white man’s Australia is founded, Keneally dedicates The Playmaker ‘To Arabanoo and his brethren, still dispossessed’. Few other novels could carry off the gesture as authoritatively. Keneally anatomises historical Australia by plucking from its origins a ...”

“... I whispered into her face she reeled back ‘Oh hen I’ve nothing for ye, but there’s an old white sheet in the wardrobe.’ II I remember a drawing in a school book a woman lying belly up beneath a tree. Above her, another woman heaved her weight from a branch up and down, bare feet joining in labour. That’s what my mother did to me. She jumped on my ...”

“... of names in favour of alliases is at its most blatant, a man called Blue is commissioned by White to keep Black under constant watch from a room across the street. Black is, apparently, writing a book. As the days pass, Blue finds himself in the position of a man condemned to sit alone in a room reading a book about a man sitting alone and writing a ...”

“... In the middle of one large ground-floor gallery almost the only exhibit still intact is a stuffed white horse which, when living, belonged to Saddam. Wahad Adnan Mahmoud, a painter who also looks after the gallery, told me the horse had been given to the Iraqi leader in 1986 by the King of Morocco. The King had sent a message along with it saying he hoped ...”

“... black novel, no Jewish novel and certainly no gay novel, although a black Caribbean writer such as Patrick Chamoiseau can win the Goncourt and many French writers have been Jewish or homosexual or both. In Britain the situation seems to be located somewhere between the extremes represented by the US and France. High culture in general and gay culture in ...”