“... and virtually untouchable acquis, and a decreasing connection to public feeling, was expanding its powers at the expense of national parliaments. The truth was that ‘the EU began as an oligarchy, it continues oligarchic, and the oligarchs see no reason to alter their practices or their ambitions. No previous empire I can think of, certainly not that of the ...”

“... of the medical establishment. He continued practising as a doctor and in 1867 produced what Richard Ellmann considered his most cheerful book, Lough Corrib. In 1873 the Royal Academy of Ireland conferred its highest honour on him. The Wildes, then, lived inside the established world and outside it. They had no difficulty with his knighthood, just as ...”

“... England’s varied landscapes – sometimes neutralised as picturesque garden features, as at Richard Tracey’s Cotswold mansion, which cannibalised parts of the former Hailes Abbey; sometimes gaunt safety hazards like Crowland Abbey church, where the tottering nave roof-vaults (twin to those in Westminster Abbey) loomed over the parish church and across ...”

“... a self-image of openness to the world but has the potential to keep the world’s big non-European powers, state and corporate, at arm’s length.I confessed to Boys I’d taken a peek at his Twitter feed. The header photo is a picture of his yellow Lotus sports car. I said I noticed he’d been tweeting supportively about Greta Thunberg and he agreed ...”

“... at least until Peaky Blinders came along? In my experience, nobody, not even Oswald Mosley or Richard Nixon, was capable of radiating such unease in company. Harold Macmillan couldn’t stand having Powell opposite him in cabinet looking ‘like Savonarola eyeing one of the more disreputable popes’. So he relocated Enoch way down the table where he ...”

“... a lack large enough to incite the putting-down of a book that has put down life. Bellow, quoting Richard Rorty, instances angrily the philosophical ambitions of a distractive culture, its mimicking of philosophical procedures. It seems highly unlikely that Ashbery was at issue here. But it has to be said that his work has achieved a height of estimation by ...”

“... in London that summer, almost all the New York Pop artists were there, but not Warhol. In 1965, Richard Avedon guest-edited an issue of Harper’s Bazaar that included work by Rauschenberg, Johns, Lichtenstein and Oldenburg, but again not Warhol.None of this spoiled the party at his first museum survey show, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in ...”

“... One example can stand for many. The US Environmental Protection Agency, created in 1970 by Richard Nixon, has been responsible – under both Democratic and Republican leadership – for a large share of the improvements we now take for granted in the restriction of toxic chemical release, fuel economy and the safety of drinking water. Trump’s first ...”

“... move, part of a Saudi-UAE effort to counter what they present as Iranian influence. As Richard Sokolsky and Aaron David Miller put it in an article for Politico, The crown prince engineered this dispute not to punish Qatar for its financing of terrorism (a hypocritical comment coming from the Saudis, whose own citizens have provided funding to ...”

“... by the three main Westminster party leaders – Cameron, Miliband and Clegg – to devolve more powers to Holyrood in the event of a ‘No’ vote and to wrap this up in a generous offer of future funding. Until that point, the focus of the ‘No’ campaign had been on the risks of independence. The message was: don’t chance it! But in the last week of ...”

“... well​ did Willie and Oscar know each other anyway? In the two massive Lives of Wilde, by Richard Ellmann and Matthew Sturgis, Hornung’s name is not mentioned once. Nor is there a single letter to or from Hornung in the equally massive Complete Letters, edited by Wilde’s grandson, Merlin Holland, and Rupert Hart-Davis. Rowland has a whole chapter ...”

“... other being capitalism’s tendency to inhibit the free development of the individual’s creative powers. Secondly, it enters into an explanation of the class struggle, the intuition being that the exploited tend to organise themselves against the exploiters. A central concern of Roemer’s book is to bridge the gap between these two aspects of ...”

“... it just as forcefully. How could he consistently associate himself with Russophobes such as Richard Pipes, who want us to believe that Russians have authoritarianism stitched into their genetic code? Deep contextual insight is ostensibly what leads Cohen to dismiss foreign blueprints and game plans. Russia should develop ‘an indigenous economic ...”

“... Third Crusade to take back the Holy City, and Tyre became the base of its operations. Its leader, Richard Plantagenet, reoccupied Acre, executing prisoners and slaughtering its inhabitants. Jerusalem, however, could not be retaken. For the next seven hundred years, with the exception of one short-lived and inconsequential Crusader occupation, the city ...”

“... its time, the book has had its admirers – my battered 1970s paperback carries endorsements from Richard Hughes, Naomi Mitchison and C.S. Lewis, and Auden was an early fan. (Auden was a patron saint of lost causes. He was also the only major writer to stand up for Laura Riding.) But mostly, the sort of people who get their opinions published have lashed it ...”