“... was completely off the map.’ He sinks into the comforts of a less inscrutable world: that of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. The comic strip, read by millions of Americans, is the centre of Franzen’s childhood imaginative life: ‘Like most of the nation’s ten-year-olds, I had a private, intense relationship with Snoopy, the cartoon beagle. He was a ...”

“... projects, this excessively long biography offers both ugly revelations and moving insights. Born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, the son of Swiss parents, a father who enamelled watchcases and a piano teacher mother, Le Corbusier was a man of apparently absolute precision in everything he did, from his obsessive timekeeping to the organisation of his own ...”

“... is one that has specifically hung over modernist women. The most notable case is that of Hope Mirrlees, whose long poem Paris appeared from the Hogarth Press in 1920, more than two years before the American edition of The Waste Land and three years before the British one (also from the Hogarth Press). Despite this, Paris is frequently read as coming ...”

“... is sometimes open to question. Political cartoonists sometimes depicted Lincoln in the guise of Charles Blondin, a tightrope walker famous for crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire, navigating a dangerous course without leaning too far to the left or right. Reynolds describes Lincoln as a ‘political Blondin’, who chose an ideologically balanced ...”

“... that is associated with our region is accompanied by passivity and dependence and I see no present hope for allaying it. I have come full circle in my thinking and have reluctantly concluded that the poverty that called into being the Appalachian Regional Commission is largely genetic in origin and is largely irreducible.’ In the autumn of 1990, Caudill ...”

“... into a lake for a swim. Her horse bolts, and she chases after it, still naked. Audiences went in hope of pornography but many were disappointed, judging by the catcalls and hissing at screenings from Berlin to Paris and New York. What they got was a lot of highfalutin symbolism involving horses and a glimpse or two of the upper torso of a shivering teenage ...”

“... truth needing no further comment, at the head of his chapter on ‘Austerity’. The nostalgic Charles Ryder is remembering the warm depths of a great mahogany-framed cooper bathtub at Brideshead. A huge towel hangs from a chintz armchair and a brass lever – ‘heavy as a piece of marine engineering’ – stands where moden taps might be. With its coal ...”

“... it’s better to press on; and that one mustn’t fall into the arms of religion after the rout of hope. Steinmetz, ingeniously, also hears it as a call to the ends of the earth. ‘The truly modern man,’ he remarks elsewhere, ‘is the merchant, the engineer, full of youthful energy, who heads for parts of the world where gold and silver are plentiful, and ...”

“... critical discourse on architecture than ever before. At the end, Jones and Woodward expressed the hope that ‘respect for London’s architectural traditions’ would define the new moment. Thirty years later, in 2013, the calm, slightly rueful optimism has gone. London’s population is near its peak, its skyline mangled by ‘the erection of tall ...”

“... right to asylum from Germany’s basic law. In Belgium, the debate brought down the government of Charles Michel. Meanwhile, parties such as Denmark’s Social Democrats have learned to outdo the right in anti-immigrant policy proposals – which include stripping asylum seekers of jewellery and quarantining them, Australian-style, on a barren island in the ...”

“... tooth. A little wider. Must go into the Kerlin Gallery later. And then the turn into Westland Row, hope to bump into no one between here and the bank, especially not Gerald Dawe or Vincent Browne, who both have offices there. Nothing against them really, but it’s mid-December, no time for meeting anyone. Pass by Sweney’s Chemist. Lemon soap. Viagra ...”

“... round the much larger antique centre in Philip Webb’s parish hall. 6 January. Papers full of Charles Kennedy being, or having been, an alcoholic. I’d have thought Churchill came close and Asquith, too, and when it comes to politics it’s hardly a disabling disease. Except to the press. But less perilous, I would have thought, to have a leader ...”

“... was twenty years old). ‘Dear Mr Gable,’ Garland sings,I am writing this to youAnd I hope that you will read it so you knowMy heart beats like a hammerAnd I stutter and I stammerEvery time I see you at the picture show.I guess I’m just another fan of yoursAnd I thought I’d write and tell you so.She then starts to sing the familiar words:You ...”

“... words of Léon Blum looking back in 1935, not just ‘tolerable, but happy’. Emile Durkheim and Charles Péguy both saw it as a moment of ‘conscience humaine’ (the French conscience is both ‘consciousness’ and ‘conscience’) that introduced into political life a new level of moral seriousness. ‘Not since the Reformation,’ Reinach solemnly ...”

“... Last autumn, at the award ceremony of the 1994 Turner Prize, Charles Saatchi took the podium at the Tate Gallery. It was a very rare public appearance by Britain’s leading private collector of contemporary art. His words were awaited with interest. Since it opened to the public in 1985, the Saatchi collection in St John’s Wood has become a focus of what’s called the contemporary art debate ...”