“... side. Out you go. I flick the catch and scoop to the real air – lupins tall in the sun, and the may with its dense unruffled shadow. The shelter is almost hidden beyond – an angle of smooth cement, and grass crushed where the steps disappear. We shall finish tonight crouching shy and deformed in our painting clothes, whitewashing walls between bunks and ...”

“... one long, ravished glance That cistern filled with nothing but the truth, Which we partake of but may not possess Unless we go too deep and become lost, By pressure of transparency confounded – Trusting our eyes instead of turning back, Drawn down by clarity into the dark, Crushed by the prospect of enlightenment, Our lungs bursting like a ...”

“... Sun should have latched so gleefully onto the ready-made stories that Big Brother provides. Or it may be that reality TV gets closer to reality than we’d care to acknowledge. If the notion that we have intricate interior lives is an illusion, fostered in part by being exposed at an impressionable age (what age isn’t impressionable?) to too much fiction ...”

“... Sea’: The Red Sea begins and ends. And then there’s an area Just beyond the Red Sea, And it may very well be That people choose to do it Before they get in the Red Sea Or after they’re in there – Possibly, probably, certainly. In ‘Doing the Capable’, Rumsfeld says: The United States isn’t going to do anything That it’s not capable of ...”

“... who think it only goes to show what a bunch of interfering megalomaniac know-nothings editors are may be appeased by rule of thumb no. 6: ‘Good editing can turn a gumbo of a piece into a tolerable example of good reporting . . . Good writing exists beyond the ministrations of any editor . . . A good editor is a mechanic, or craftsman, while a good ...”

“... The Protectorate was over, the Commonwealth had failed. Charles II entered London on 29 May 1660, his birthday, and began hanging judges and reopening theatres. Tongue firmly in cheek, a royal patent lamented that ‘many plays formerly acted do contain several profane, obscene and scurrilous passages’: the solution was to have women’s parts henceforth played by women, as ‘useful and instructive representations of human life ...”

“... reading, writing and critical thinking abilities. Without a copy of Lord of the Flies, I may not be able to do a reading project in this class. This would mean that my students would go through my whole class without ever utilising an actual book.’ Hardy Williams is run with public money but as a charter school is exempt from most school district ...”

“... never blush. Death is the focus of the blockbuster show at the National Portrait Gallery (until 27 May): these fleshy phantoms stand or recline in a universe of putrefaction. The individual canvases are stunning, but when you see them all together, a sense of spiritual plague comes off them like a dead-handed signature, reminiscent of the sun-blotting visions ...”

“... chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, was a mate of Alastair Campbell’s. Lord Hutton may not have found this significant, but I do. MI6 has long experience in the dissemination of forged documents to make a political case. In 1924, two MI6 officers leaked a forged letter, purportedly from Zinoviev, the president of the Comintern, to the central ...”

“... straight into the boys’ showers’. The complaints from the NUHT, by sterilising the site, may help shore up FriendsReunited’s ethos – just so long as they don’t get it shut down. But if its days are numbered (as schooldays must be), what conclusion to the nostalgia trip could be more fitting, what final gesture more authentic, than the head ...”

“... including ‘Messerschmitt’, ‘Jesuit’ and ‘lickety-split’, and none of them obscene – may have been, he certainly erred in misquoting Thomas Edison (no rhymes), who suggested the ratio was 1 to 99, as we are reliably reminded in Science Says: A Collection of Quotations on the History, Meaning and Practice of Science, edited by Rob Kaplan ...”

“... many sports, murky. It wasn’t on the programme at the Ancient Greek Olympics, though the Minoans may have used poles to leap over the bulls during bull-dancing events. According to one story, the modern sport derives from a traditional way of getting around the Fens of East Anglia, or other waterway-riddled parts of Europe, such as the Netherlands. At any ...”

“... In Frank Auerbach’s Recent Pictures, at Marlborough Fine Art (until 24 October), there may appear to be a compulsive zest. Alleyway and streetscape, seated figure and reclining head, are confidently asserted, eyes jabbed into expression, zig-zag strokes softening edges and sawing up the sides of tower blocks across the Hampstead Road ...”

“... the Museum of Modern Art, which is currently staging the exhibition Projects: Ming Smith (until 29 May).Like her contemporary Nan Goldin, Smith was a part of the scene she photographed, and was less interested in documenting it than in depicting its specific moods and textures, and her own responses to it. (That she’s far less well-known than Goldin is an ...”

“... at either end of the day, is the one modern photographers of buildings and landscapes wait for. It may be rare, and more common in the South than the North, but you can experience it once in a while at almost any latitude between the Mediterranean and the Arctic Circle. What had at first to be seen through the eyes of Claude was, in effect, waiting to be ...”