“... secular triumph – a fragile narrative that had to be constantly retold. Contemporary Russia may like to see itself as the saviour of a religious tradition all but obliterated by the communists, but this too is a fragile narrative. The traces that survive suggest a less straightforward ...”

“... in 2022.Whenever a new Tory leader takes over, journalists speculate that their predilections may reanimate and reconfigure the party. With some distance, it is less clear how much they matter. It was just about possible to imagine that May might create a Tory version of Christian Democracy, or that Johnson’s claims ...”

“... it would amount to a kind of emotional fraud to pretend otherwise’. Polish fears that someone may turn up one day and say your home is no longer yours may be exaggerated, but they aren’t baseless. Aside from claims from the descendants of Jews dispossessed by the Nazis, a wave of ‘wild reprivatisations’ since 1989 ...”

“... out of the party. The ensuing talent crisis led to the selection of Truss. The succession of May, Johnson and Truss to the prime ministership resembles one of those tragic but horribly memorable failed suicide attempts, in which the sufferer shoots themself in the head but fails to die. The Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget ...”

“... waits for a Canadian man she met many years ago when he was a tourist in her country, knowing he may never arrive. Another woman recalls how she fled to Europe partly to escape a marriage forced on her when she was thirteen. After working as a maid, cleaning ‘sixty lavatories … before 10 a.m.’, she becomes a sex worker, because ‘what is the ...”

“... the active line comes into being. ‘It goes out for a walk, so to speak, aimlessly.’ The camera may appear to survey a terrain. But there is nothing to stop the viewer’s eye going out for a walk along the tracks laid down by the countless overlapping material histories embedded within it.Klee also imagined a different kind of active line: one that is ...”

“... are long gone. In fact, they are now so rarely seen that when they are visible residents may say: ‘The volcanoes came out’ – as if the mountains had ‘decided one day to take a look at us’. ‘On those rare, clear days,’ according to Villoro, ‘we’re a bit better.’ Moods are lifted and morals improved simply by the ‘possibility of a ...”

“... therefore the only leverage available to Crown Representatives) is to report anything that ‘may present a risk’ to the government.The privileged access given to business has also had the effect of tilting the playing field against those other social interest groups that must compete for the government’s attention. And it has encouraged increasingly ...”

“... I grew weary of his shtick. He found love, moved to France, got famous. Sardonic condescension may have suited the squirrelly scrounger from North Carolina, but it was a poor fit for the European sophisticate he’d become, however self-mockingly he inhabited the role. His writing has remained competent and straightforward, but memorable prose was never ...”

“... art and culture. He wanted, as he put it, to ‘capture the soul of Spain in a museum’ and, in May 1904, he founded the society as a free public library, museum and educational institution. The RA show is the last leg of an international tour while the Society’s neoclassical buildings in Washington Heights are being refurbished.The selection in the main ...”

“... was 41, he volunteered for the Army in 1915 and served in the trenches as an infantry officer. He may have fibbed about some of his war experiences but seems on the whole to have done well despite his unsoldierly sloppiness. As Alan Judd remarks, his war service deserved more praise than it got – another instance of his chronic bad luck. Allen Tate once ...”

“... of the sub-culture to which they belonged. As for the lengthening and confusion, three examples may suffice. Steinberg’s chronicle of events in Croatia is alike exhaustive and bewildering: we do not require all this detail to convince us that its ruler, Ante Pavelic, could well lay claim – in a crowded field – to rank as the most unsavoury of ...”

“... but does not note the view of some medical men of the time that though their surgical death rate may have been too high, they were often, as GPs, very good diagnosticians. The voluntary hospitals were of all sizes and all qualities, and among their élite the teaching hospitals provided an additional problem of to which department the cost of their teaching ...”

“... kiss. The camera followed the boss as he walked off and was observed to wipe away the kiss. Or he may just have been rubbing his cheek. There was no knowing. But it was difficult not to cherish, at that moment of drama, the thought of the putdowns to which the player had been subjected. His power and invention transfigured England’s contribution to the ...”

“... could admire. In public office, notably as the architect and first Director-General of the BBC, he may have achieved a number of admirable ends, if fewer than pious legend attributes to him. But the arrogance, bitterness and venom towards others he reveals in his private papers would blister paint. Not for the first time I was forced to wonder if the ...”