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“... definition of religion itself.’ In Britain, Scientology is not recognised as a religion or as a charity, but it is a not-for-profit organisation and as such is exempt from VAT. Only the Royal Navy officially designates it a religion. Urban takes no position on whether or not Scientology should qualify as a religion; he argues that religion is a form of ...”

“... for the engraved versions of his graphic novels: the ‘progresses’, illustrating the lives of Tom Rakewell and Moll Hackabout, and Marriage à la Mode, the story of the disastrous arranged marriage of a city merchant’s daughter to the son of an earl. By issuing these and other series of his paintings as prints, Hogarth had gained more currency for his ...”

“... centres for victims of domestic violence closed between 2010 and 2014. The TUC found that the LGBT charity and voluntary sector took a ‘real and significant’ hit in the same period. The list could be extended almost indefinitely: tens of thousands of streetlights are now switched off after midnight, plunging whole areas into darkness at a risk to drivers ...”

“... floats something more complicated. The dedication is to Ann Cotton, the founder of CamFed, a charity that supports the education of girls in sub-Saharan Africa, as a note explains – so never mind Oxford or Harvard. To read The Last Samurai for the first time is to experience an odd mix of emotions. With its kanji and its carbon dating, it seems so new ...”

“... Friday, when this year Pontius Pilate is not the only one washing his hands.16 April. A card from Tom King with news of the tattoo of me that he had put on his arm (pictured in the Diary published in the LRB of 3 January 2019): ‘The tattoo remains popular, though bizarrely one person thought it was of Henry Kissinger. It also makes for an amusing ...”

“... crooked-toothed boy from Bromley: he is simultaneously star and fan, both Ground Control and Major Tom. It isn’t just about the words: you can hear it in his voice throughout the album, the way his accent veers between South London, the Home Counties and somewhere else entirely; the way the melody bobs along at a hummable level before suddenly shooting off ...”

“... written in January 1937 from the Herbert home, Pixton Park, to his old Lancing contemporary, Tom Driberg, then a gossip columnist on the Daily Express: I have got engaged to be married, and shall be announcing the fact early next week. I don’t imagine the story will be of great news value but if you care to publish it you can have it a day ahead of ...”

“... of lawsuits in forma pauperis by which indigent suitors were given ‘process and counsel of charity’. This survived, along with the humiliating system of dock briefs, into the mid-20th century, and not solely at the margins. In 1965, as a pupil barrister, I was briefed in forma pauperis to appear before the Privy Council on a petition for leave to ...”

“... for intercepts they know nothing about. As Vanbrugh had it, ‘they have too much zeal to have any charity; they make debauches in piety as sinners do in wine.’ These base people, remarkably without a single criminal conviction between them, are involved, as Brown says, in ‘a race to the bottom driven by ever-receding profitability’. The Nazi politician ...”

“... I am a libertine, but three families living in your section of the city lived for five years on my charity, and I rescued them from the depths of poverty. I am a libertine, but I saved a deserter from the military, a man abandoned by his entire regiment and by his colonel, from certain death. I am a libertine, but at Evry, with your entire family looking on, I ...”

“... time came they could leave together. The undecided slept in a large open room. An Israeli relief charity ran a disco where volunteers danced with Ukrainian kids under strobe lights. A clown in a top hat and red nose roamed around doing magic tricks. A canvas sheet was spread along the length of a wall, and children crouched over it painting a mural. Someone ...”

“... a decade on from Gamlin’s prime, such avuncular kidding could gain you your own TV show plus charity-god status, an almost nationalised belief in your goodness and zaniness and readiness to help. But Gamlin lived his double life in the country that existed before Cliff Richard. On the back of his broadcasting fame, and his other interests, he became a ...”

“... their yellow-eyed mamas and idiot boys. But there is a patience in Capote’s novel, a surprising charity, a seamlessly variegated emotion, that would have made it quite remarkable in a very good writer double his age, which was 24. People tend to blame early success for all the horrors that follow. But that can only be partly true for Truman Capote. Success ...”

“... a-Bang’.) To make money, Elton began to work as a session musician, singing backing vocals for Tom Jones and playing piano with the Hollies. He also worked for a label called Marble Arch which knocked out versions of chart hits and sold the albums cheap in supermarkets. This, Elton points out, might sound sad, but it was in fact ‘screamingly, howlingly ...”

“... considered an overseas ‘media import like Hill Street Blues’, in Garfield’s words. The gay charity Switchboard assured nervous callers that ‘sex is as safe as crossing the road.’ When Terrence Higgins collapsed at work and began inexplicably dying in a London hospital in July 1982, his boyfriend suggested to doctors that ‘maybe it was this ...”