“... her album Butterfly, encouraging her to ditch the showtunes for covers of Bill Withers and David Bowie. He wanted to bring out Streisand’s ‘sexy side’: he told a journalist she had been playing ‘Ray Stark’s mother-in-law’ for too long.Streisand and Peters stayed together for eight years. He sold his salon and made a move on Hollywood, using ...”

“... Wilde himself was standing trial. How somebody as worldly and bright as Wilde, so alert to the laws of the ruling class and at the receiving end of so much advice and so vulnerable to blackmail and so broke, could have been led so easily towards his downfall remains a mystery. But there are crucial aspects of his make-up and background, especially in the ...”

“... of the land and spoke to the people working on it. He addressed groups of farmers on the Corn Laws, taxes, placemen, money for agricultural paupers, and the general need for reform.In one of his columns he describes meeting a man coming home from the fields. ‘I asked him how he got on,’ he writes. ‘He said, very badly. I asked him what was the cause ...”

“... to do a degree in, say, German, no matter how much a university brings its price down, then the laws of the market dictate that that degree should not be offered. What can ‘undesirable reductions in the scale of provision’ mean in a market system? At one point the White Paper concedes that Hefce should ensure ‘a healthy mix of subjects’. Indeed it ...”

“... computations have too. But chips had become so small that they were starting to run up against the laws of physics.Parallel processing instead performs calculations not in sequence, but simultaneously. Rather than working through one huge calculation, it works through lots of small calculations at the same time. On YouTube, you can find the MythBusters, an ...”

“... pointed out how ‘the composition of the citizens, properly so called, is to be gathered from the laws and customs of each state ... When I use the word people I mean the citizens who are so called in a more eminent sense, ’those who by direct consent and agreement entered into with the sovereign himself originally instituted the state’ and ‘not all ...”

“... that would allow Palantir to talk about what they’re doing.’ Under the UK’s weak lobbying laws, policy briefings are not automatically classified as paid advocacy, which meant that Global Counsel didn’t have to declare Palantir as a client on public registers. ‘Global Counsel made sure that everyone knew not to contact ministers and senior civil ...”

“... is unprecedented in its speed and daring and in the lightness of casualties.’ I heard Colonel David Hackworth say: ‘Hey diddle diddle, it’s straight up the middle!’ I heard the Pentagon spokesman say that 95 per cent of the Iraqi casualties were ‘military-age males’. I heard an official from the Red Crescent say: ‘On one stretch of highway ...”

“... the fatal tendency of the Conservative governments to which Britain has been subjected since 2010. David Cameron’s declaration in January 2013 that, if the Conservatives won the next election, they would offer a referendum on membership of the EU – which wasn’t a significant concern, never mind a priority, for British voters – is a fine ...”

“... to the ‘public good’ or else to the Jewish people, where these sometimes seem to be the same. David Blumberg, chairman of the board of directors of the National Library, puts the case this way: ‘The library does not intend to give up on cultural assets belonging to the Jewish people … Because it is not a commercial institution and the items kept there ...”

“... do like reading other women, and seeing them properly recognised for their work.But it’s also, David Runciman reckons on his Talking Politics podcast, to do with the eventfulness of Arendt’s life, which is why Ken Krimstein’s comic-book biography of 2018 is structured around our heroine’s ‘Three Escapes’. Arendt did not arrive in the US until ...”

“... this local diorama of frivolity and falsehood, however, lie ostensible truths of universal scope: laws of the heart and mind operative everywhere, abstract and absolute, secrets brought at last to light by art, unmediated access to which readers anywhere on earth can gain. Proust was not, of course, the first novelist to issue such existential edicts, even if ...”

“... the world.’ By the 18th century the ruling classes had become sceptical about witchcraft and the laws against witches were revoked or allowed to lapse. The sabbat became a historical curiosity. In this century, witches have become feminist and New Age icons, revered as victims of a Christian patriarchy’s persecution and ...”

“... palace coup in Oman in 1970 and – last but not least – three abortive plots, farmed out to David Stirling and sundry other mercenaries under the initially benevolent eye of Western intelligence services, to overthrow the Gaddafi regime between 1971 and 1973 in an episode known as the Hilton Assignment. At the same time, the story of Libya in 2011 gives ...”

“... evidence against Dreyfus, which in fact did not exist, could not be revealed in court. David Miliband recently used exactly the same argument to justify withholding details of Great Britain’s policy on and, the evidence suggests, complicity in rendition and torture. National security as the cover for the erosion of civil liberties is something we ...”