“... point of crisis. The party in power, whose late 20th-century figurehead, Margaret Thatcher, did so much to create the problem, is responding by separating off the economically least powerful and squeezing them into the smallest, meanest, most insecure possible living space. In effect, if not in explicit intention, it is a let-the-poor-be-poor crusade, a ...”

“... portrait of Sir Thomas Gresham looks like an Edwardian tinted photograph, and with the sitter so eerily present not entirely pleasing. All art is tiring and these paintings in particular as they’re crowded with detail and every dress and doublet draws you in to trace the embroidery or work out the folds and flourishes. The poster for the exhibition is ...”

“... washing sharing the basement, a desolate and grilling public garden, and the sea full of floating brown pennies of oil. This short passage shows a spontaneous poetic flair rarely equalled in Forster’s fiction, or elsewhere in the diaries: ‘those trudging squares and triangles’, both exact and subjective, the complex ...”

“... opportunity of designing buildings for an entirely new form of society. Peter Ahrends’s self-published book A3: Threads and Connections is an oblique telling of this tale, through three generations of architects. Peter founded the influential firm Ahrends, Burton and Koralek (ABK) in 1960s London, and his grandfather, Bruno, was one of the ...”

“... Papers, revealing the systematic mendacity behind the Vietnam War, as well as Seymour Hersh’s investigations into the illegal covert operations of the CIA. The Senate had convened an inquiry into CIA misconduct, and even the fanatical cold warrior Richard Nixon had promoted détente with the Soviet Union and opened a diplomatic door to China. One could ...”

“... sports are by no means all boastful or complicit. The supreme text of recent years is James Fox’s account of Lord Lucan and his set, with their boffes de politesse. There is a touch of Lucanian zombiness in The Monument, and the peer himself takes part in The Passion of John Aspinall. Patrician insolence has quite often appeared to express a perception of ...”

“... in which she was played by Nancy Carroll with Helena Bonham Carter as Margaret. In the book’s prologue, she describes Bonham Carter, who ‘as it happens’ is a cousin of Glenconner’s late husband, Colin Tennant (Lord Glenconner), coming for tea and taking copious notes. It was at this moment, as she tried to ...”

“... detailing why it had come to this conclusion. When the coroner refused to include the jury’s note in his final ruling, Middleton’s mother began a campaign to secure a formal public determination that the prison service was responsible for her son’s death. The obstacle she faced ...”

“... If you had asked an 18th or 19th-century Englishman about his country’s constitution, you would not have got the baffled look you get today. The belief that a constitution is a document and that we do not have one is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Mr Podsnap was in no doubt whatever about the reality of a constitution that nobody could actually see: ‘And Do You Find, Sir,’ pursued Mr Podsnap, with dignity, ‘Many Evidences that Strike You, of our British Constitution in the Streets of the World’s Metropolis, London, Londres, London?’ The foreign gentleman begged to be pardoned, but did not altogether understand ...”

“... of English, and giggles. His English is probably good but he prefers to use interpreters. ‘I am so sorry to hear about your accident.’ ‘Shukran’ (‘Thank you’). ‘Are you feeling recovered?’ ‘Al hamdullilah.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘I was coming out of the mosque in the souk in Amara and two gunmen were waiting. It was dark because there is ...”

“... Anthony Blanche outfits he wore at Oxford, and, later, the poolstick collection of headmaster’s canes he kept handy to beat women’s bottoms. The cigarettes eventually killed him, but it is only with one in his hand that he looks fully activated, in character. In London, creating a sensation as a theatre ...”

“... became the way the 1920s were remembered, even though only a tiny proportion of the world’s population in 1925 drank hard liquor out of teapots in speakeasies; or danced – danced, danced, danced! – often in a cloche hat and with a long cigarette-holder pointed riskily at their partner’s crotch. It took thirty ...”

“... My father had no gun, or any land to shoot over. So when he decided that it was time for me, then aged 15 or 16, to learn how to shoot, he had to cadge. We borrowed an old 12-bore from a local farmer, a rickety weapon the lock, stock and barrel of which were barely connected, and my father then asked his neighbour, Siegfried Sassoon, who lived in the next village, whether we could loose off a few cartridges in his woods ...”

“... Simone Weil, picking herself like a scab? Teresa of Avila, a chilly forehead and a warm thigh, or St Simeon, being written by the tip of his stylus? You may prefer Marguerite Porete, burning alive with her book, or the rich black intersection of St John of the Cross or the pyroclastic whisper of Anonymous, Unknown ...”

“... and dance in the era of African independence. It was the brainchild of Léopold Senghor, Senegal’s president, who saw the arts as a field of struggle. Two subsequent festivals took place, in Algiers in 1969 and Lagos in 1977, and their history bears out Senghor’s claim in a way he did not intend: they have faded into ...”