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“... George Craig, the translator, to the limit, and which in both languages challenges the reader’s powers of comprehension. Duthuit had asked Beckett to write something to promote the artist Bram van Velde, whose abstract paintings Beckett greatly admired. A debate ensues as to what van Velde’s qualities are. The premise for both men is what Beckett calls ...”

“... that Kelley was disabled in some way (and disability is traditionally associated with the psychic powers he claimed). There is a reference, during one of the séances, to his difficulty in kneeling. And then there is the question of his ears, or lack of them. This is sometimes said to be a late tradition, dating from the 18th century. It is not. It first ...”

“... both NIEO idealism and corruption. In 1974, the Venezuelan Congress extended ‘special powers’ to President Pérez, giving him complete discretion to legislate and spend. He nationalised industries, limited foreign influence in banking and commerce, and launched a massive programme of state-controlled industrialisation. Money flowed lavishly and ...”

“... Richardson had insisted they were innocent and had been framed by the police. I recalled that Sir Michael Havers, who led for the Crown in the 1975 trial, had reasoned to the jury that if the Four were innocent, a huge conspiracy to pervert the course of justice must have taken place. Where did this leave Havers’s conspiracy? Had the Court of Appeal ...”

“... for a comparative approach to historical memory owes a great deal to the work of the historian Michael Rothberg. For Rothberg, placing memories of the Holocaust in dialogue with memories of colonial violence advances our understanding of both. It also reveals the centrality of ideas about race to European identity and, by extension, Europe’s dealings ...”

“... Tikvah, who introduced me to a chain-smoking, grey-haired man whom everyone addressed as Mikado. Michael Warchavski runs the AIC and is married to Lea Tsemel, whom I have known for a decade as an indefatigable Israeli lawyer stubbornly defending Palestinians in Israeli courts. Reminding me that Israel is an intensely legalistic country and that the only ...”

“... of prisons. The second secretary of state had privatised the probation service. The third, Michael Gove, had decided to sell off the London prisons, which stood on prime city-centre real estate. Liz Truss, the fourth, had rented out floors in our office building, got rid of more managers and promised to reduce costs across prisons and courts with new ...”

“... power? Runciman is not alone in thinking they can. The same assumption can be found in the work of Michael Mann, of which Runciman has been a severe critic, but whose scale and focus invite comparison. The common source of this bias is Weber – the dominant influence on this cohort of British sociologists. Fixation with power has, of course, gone much further ...”

“... standard of value, no conceivable truce, among them, any more than in the world of the great powers. The hope of a eudaimonist mediation between rival deities was the paltriest illusion of all. This Nietzschean note is wholly missing in Berlin. It is no accident that he should scarcely ever have alluded to Weber’s work, for all its absolute centrality ...”

“... declared in one of the best-known passages in the lecture, ‘is making a pact with diabolical powers.’ It doesn’t follow from this that we are all damned; only that no one should get involved with politics if damnation is what primarily concerns them. Förster, Weber said, was a man he could respect ‘because of the undoubted integrity of his ...”

“... my spear.’ This sort of soft porn abuse would not be allowed if Homer Inc had the revocation powers that McDonald’s Corporation exercises from Oak Brook, Illinois over its franchisees in 119 countries – nor would the new Stephen Mitchell translation be allowed. It’s not that I would hazard to challenge the merits of Mitchell’s translation. On ...”

“... job was to protect their lives and property, adjusted rather easily to the expansion of police powers over black Americans. They were mostly unmoved by the argument that drug use and crime among poor blacks were the result of economic deprivation, discrimination and racism, or that society had a responsibility to remedy these problems. The military ...”

“... The following year Lula hosted the BRIC summit in Brazil itself. On paper, the four largest powers outside the Euro-American imperium would appear to represent, if not an alternative, at least some check to its dominion. Yet it is striking that, although Brazil alone of the four is not a major military power, it is so far the only one to have defied the ...”

“... created a National Security Council dominated by the military, which acquired wide-ranging powers. With these institutions in place, the second cycle of postwar Turkish politics was set in motion. As soon as elections were held, it became clear that the voting bloc put together by the Democrats, though at first distributed across a number of successor ...”

“... that transcends ‘the left-right divide’. He seemed proud of quotes he’d found that made Michael Oakeshott echo Hannah Arendt – ‘whose work has really influenced my work’ – and Matthew Arnold agree with Lenin, though ‘you couldn’t be further apart than Lenin and Arnold on most things.’ It’s difficult to give a fair account of his ...”