“... also have our own supersized mindfuck when it comes to the accumulating and spaffing of cash. You may not believe it, as the cost of living crisis rages and the planet boils, but London – having just lost its status as Russia’s favourite laundromat – is now the private jet capital of Europe. ‘The obvious reason that private airlines have done so well ...”

“... the referendum campaign. The SNP, it turns out, is just another party.The independence movement may not have been as transformative as its supporters hoped, but it was, for a time, genuinely exciting. It raised the political stakes, insisting that those who wanted to rule should offer something worth going outside (or at least online) for. The SNP briefly ...”

“... provide a portrait of the civic negligence that became rampant in Austerity Britain. Beckham may have joined the 12-hour queue to pay his respects when the queen was lying in state, but the state itself doesn’t matter to him, except in the hugely sentimental way that fans interpret loyalty.Thankfully, we have Posh to keep up the Lols. The main point ...”

“... But collecting an egg is no different from stealing it. An egg in an oologist’s collection may appear intact, but it will have been pierced (sometimes twice) in order to extract its contents. The pristine shell once held the promise of new life; now it holds nothing at all. Great auk eggs were particularly sought after because of their size and ...”

“... Reserve, and climbed to more than $5000 in February before dipping slightly with the Iran war. It may climb higher: the geopolitical forces driving up prices show no signs of slowing. Research by the World Economic Forum and other bodies shows significant increases in global financial and political instability since Trump returned to the presidency. Gold ...”

“... has spent the weeks since Murrell’s guilty plea talking down the impact of the scandal. He may be right that a parliamentary inquiry is not the appropriate forum for an investigation of the governance of an individual political party; an alternative would be to appoint a KC to lead an independent investigation. Swinney would prefer the public to take ...”

“... anti-imperialist sentiments were shared across the political spectrum.Contemporary commentators may imagine that the US takeover of Venezuela ‘reflects the mechanics of the new age of empire’, as Kinstler put it in the New York Times. But when it comes to defining what is new about it, this form of empire turns out to be suspiciously similar to the old ...”

“... Eileen had no axe to grind, which made her a rare bird among the expats in Barcelona and may have accounted for her charm in Charles and Lois’s eyes. For all their zeal, they were a lively, sociable couple. The fourth member of the party on that bucolic outing was George Tioli, an ‘Italian boy . . . quite a civilised and interesting ...”

“... last poem in the book: ‘I understand “Annunciations” only in the sense that cats and dogs may be said to understand human conversations (i.e. they grasp something by the tone of the speaking voice), but without help I cannot construe it.’ Alvarez’s introduction to The New Poetry, when I read it as a teenager, left me even more baffled since I had ...”

“... are very few.It​ is all but sure that Sadiq Khan will be re-elected as London’s mayor on 6 May. This will not be an exciting election; the sole uncertainty is whether Khan will win in the first round or the second. Unexciting elections give political strategists sleepless nights. Will voters turn out when the outcome is already assured? Will the ...”

“... give feedback to others, we allow ourselves to be steered in directions we did not consent to, and may not wish to go. This has echoes of the mid-20th-century fears of advertising, PR and propaganda, with the difference that now, in the age of reaction chains, we are drawn towards controversy, absurd public spectacles, endlessly mutating memes, trolling ...”

“... a declaration of war on Germany’. Nolte goes on to suggest that this ‘official declaration may give grounds in support of the momentous thesis that it allowed Hitler to treat the Jews as prisoners of war and, that is, intern them.’ (This reasoning, the Israeli historian Saul Friedländer has claimed, is based on an argument advanced by David ...”

“... sensitive to colours – sounds and letters arrived in his ear colour-coded – and this may account for the depth of his response to White’s oxymoronic accuracy of observation. Is it fellow-feeling or emulous study which produces an earlier variant on the plausible mismatches of nature’s palette? ‘Brown woolly smoke arched and dipped over the ...”

“... brave, and enlivened’ by an innocent love of mischief. She drily adds: ‘Of his modesty, it may be said that though everyone remarked on his reluctance to talk about himself, it is not recorded that anyone ever failed to get him to do so.’ Rider Haggard, in turn, obviously used Selous as a basis for Allan Quatermain in King Solomon’s Mines ...”

“... Armstrong’s pre-cancer physique probably had something to do with steroids, and the steroids may or may not have contributed to his getting cancer: we can’t know. In a conversation with his doctors during his cancer treatment that Armstrong now denies ever took place, but which two friends who were in the room at the ...”