“... included school walkouts and demonstrations by tens of thousands of African American, Hispanic and white pupils; ‘the first gay street protest in America’; anti-Vietnam protests so intense and disastrously policed that they helped persuade Lyndon Johnson not to stand for re-election; extensive activism by the Black Panthers and other Black Power ...”

“... of the press) proclaiming ‘Get your racist education at Stanford.’ The acronym DWEM (dead white European male) and the neologism ‘freshpeople’ were giggled over at dinner parties. Jesse Jackson visited the campus and was greeted by five hundred students chanting ‘Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Western Culture’s got to go’ (the course, they meant – but it ...”

“... or wrote but never finished, with fantastic, phantom, harpooning titles like In Ballast to the White Sea, La Mordida, Swinging the Maelstrom. All these things – books, changed circumstances, surgery – are cures of one sort or another, for as Stephen Spender remarked in his introduction to Under the Volcano, ‘with Lowry one is never far away from the ...”

“... quartet play Schubert everyone formed up in a line. A drum was beaten somewhere ahead, girls in white robes scattered flowers, and we all went zig-zagging up a path to the little concrete structure in which Lawrence’s ashes are reputedly incorporated. In front of it is the tombstone of Frieda Lawrence, and of her third husband, Angelo Ravagli; above it is ...”

“... a prescription for public policy, made on the understanding that something could be done. Men in white coats should be given the funds to get back to their laboratories and defeat Aids. And ‘ought’ in the sense that we had a particular duty to a persecuted group. As well as the practical, good-housekeeping kind of ‘ought’ there was an ...”

“... The Titanic was a ship of fools. As John Wilson Foster tells us, the grand staircase came in William and Mary style, though the balustrade was Louis XIV; the first-class dining saloon and reception rooms were Jacobean, the restaurant Louis XVI, the lounge Louis XV (Versailles), the reading and writing-room late Georgian, the smoking-room early ...”

“... of poor black Jamaicans burned down the Morant Bay courthouse and killed 18 people, most of them white and one the local chief magistrate, who had just had them fired on by soldiers after a reading of the Riot Act. The governor of the island, Edward Eyre, on the advice of his military commander and his law officers, decreed martial law in the county where ...”

“... There was a lot of racial tension around bebop. Black men were going with fine, rich white bitches. They were all over these niggers out in public and the niggers were clean as a motherfucker and talking all kind of hip shit. Trane liked to ask all these motherfucking questions back then about what he should or shouldn’t play ...”

“... on the newest arrivals. Occasional television films from the Sixties show the indigenous white population leaving for Essex with relief, but the more profuse coverage of the last few years tells the different story of rundown Huguenot buildings being lovingly restored and re-established as private homes. Established in 1977, the Spitalfields Historic ...”

“... by the Post-Modern artist Robert Wilson, who has draped the Frank Lloyd Wright spiral ramps with white gauze, bathed the museum in patchouli and musk, and created a Japanese soundtrack to accompany the show, the exhibition is a perfect example of the blend of fashion, art, commerce and academic analysis that marks the current cultural scene. How we dress now ...”

“... the previous year that ‘sometimes you remind me of a gentleman in full evening dress and white gloves attempting to put something right with the kitchen plumbing without soiling his attire.’ It comes as no surprise when the great man announces that ‘Edimbourg is nearer to being my spiritual home than is Glasgow.’ Yet one of the many strengths ...”

“... or almost here, and then it’s gone: politics as a dance of blind men thrashing the air with white sticks, while failing to land a single blow on a Struwwelpeter clown-king bent on slow-puncture abdication by photo opportunity, a different costume or a different country every night. This man changes the rules of the game if he is in danger of losing a ...”

“... of Interior Decoration was once again made available, after being out of print for a decade. William Weaver’s English translation of La Filosofia dell’ Arredamento was first published in 1964, which means that there were about ten years when you could buy it new, and then about ten years when you couldn’t. No doubt it was obtainable second-hand if ...”

“... and the fairy queen echo the extravagant and often sly fairytales – ‘Puss in Boots’, ‘The White Cat’ – that were being retrieved and written down in France by Charles Perrault and Mme d’Aulnoy in the 1690s. D’Aulnoy did, however, claim that her inspiration came to her from ‘une vieille esclave arabe’.So the story of The Arabian Nights is a ...”

“... Many Democrats remain convinced that Nader’s presidential campaign in 2000 cost Al Gore the White House and ushered in the calamitous reign of George W. Bush. The obsession with Nader is at first puzzling: blame for Bush’s ascendancy can be traced to many other sources. Gore’s campaign was timid and bungling, but in any case he won the election and ...”