“... and a love story’. Opening Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes we read, inside the front cover, white on black in Barthes’s handwriting: Tout ceci doit être considéré comme dit par un personnage de roman. What follows is text and pictures, a fractured autobiography, a dictionary of personal themes, arranged alphabetically. A fiction? Not ...”

“... publishing is in denial of diversity. A topic as basic as the creation of life is racialised: ‘white women believed that motherhood was both original and endlessly interesting; a form of cultural narcissism.’ At a commissioning meeting ‘two non-fiction debuts are given the green light with almost indecent eagerness – one, a book on new ...”

“... for the Isle of Dogs, that unlucky swamp, were shredded for the construction of a shelf of towers. Michael Heseltine, a wild-haired, mad-eyed visionary (Klaus Kinski to Margaret Thatcher’s Werner Herzog), pushed Docklands across the Thames to the East Greenwich Peninsula, Bugsby’s Marshes. The obsessive, neurotic and delusional Millennium Dome concept was ...”

“... the Crowd, and – an improbable-seeming name, perhaps, in this context – Menachem Begin’s White Nights. The self-excited, voyeuristic fervour of Norman Mailer’s reveries about crime and the nature of the criminal belong to another world entirely. Two final points. First: how foolish and dangerous it is, in thinking about the nature of the Soviet ...”

“... Fox, recently released from a long spell in a mental hospital, given shelter and support by a white-goateed older writer called Frank Sargeson, played by Martyn Sanderson. She lives and types in his garden shed, finishes a novel, and sends it off to a publisher he has recommended. The novel is accepted and Sargeson waves at the garden gate as Frame leaves ...”

“... New York’s youngest ever city councilman in 1991, using race-baiting tactics in a predominantly white district. He won Schumer’s congressional seat when Schumer ran for the Senate in 1998. In Washington he fell in line, and voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2002. He made a failed bid for the Democratic nomination for New York mayor in 2005, remembered ...”

“... project to Warner Brothers. The whole cringe-making story is told in The Man Who Heard Voices by Michael Bamberger (Gotham, 2006). He describes a painful supper at which Shyamalan joins a group of Disney executives: ‘What are you saying, Nina? What are you saying the script needs? Three weeks? Three months?’ Nina said nothing. Her face said: Not three ...”

“... Ofqual’s way of dealing with public opinion was to hire a PR firm run by former associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, in a contract awarded without a process of competitive tendering.When the A level results were published on 13 August, 39 per cent of teacher-predicted grades had been revised downwards. The resulting furore – including a ...”

“... the mistake of appearing to be America’s surrogate in Europe; he, at least, never fawned on the White House. Heath is the nearest thing This Blessed Plot has to a politician hero; apart from Roy Jenkins, the other heroes are the usually unsung civil servants: Lee, O’Neill, Robinson, Butler, Palliser etc, who shepherded us into the Community with a skill ...”

“... voices of the victims, that is what it feels like too. Aids starts in the 1970s. Here’s Edmund White, describing the San Francisco gay ‘look’ in his travel book States of Desire (1980). Bodies made themselves intelligible: A strongly marked mouth and swimming, soulful eyes (the effect of the moustache); a V-shaped torso by metonymy from the open V of ...”

“... find the best.’ You are always alone with the oddness of modern consumption. Walking under the white lights of Sainsbury’s you find out just who you are. The reams of cartons, the pyramids of tins: there they stand on the miles of shelves, the story of how we live now. Cereal boxes look out at you with their breakfast-ready smiles, containing flakes of ...”

“... talking), runs slap against the plywood barrier. As a precaution, the authorities have painted a white line around the former boating lake in Victoria Park, along with a helpful notice: CAUTION WATER. You can’t be too careful of this stuff, this alien medium. Comb off the algae carpet, the scum, and prepare to airlift in a dune or two, with deckchairs and ...”

“... that sometimes one got tired of fine dishes and preferred ‘hot Mexican food’ and the ‘white liquor of the country’. He liked to wear a sombrero and a red cravat when riding around, but locals thought he looked like a drink salesman. Carlota did her bit, enduring endless hugs with society ladies – the abrazo – and throwing gigantic parties ...”

“... off, and mixed bold and light, serifed and sans serif characters in single words. He left a lot of white space, words often ran up or down the page, and big type was often mixed with very small photographs. These devices slowed readers down. Readers who persevered became initiates. His layouts were a rejection of the conservative traditions which still govern ...”

“... the narrator, Mike, says of the Peak District in March.From above you could see it lying pure white and motionless in the sun. Going down into it you found it grey, without comfort. A tree stood on the interface, bare and thorny. Inside, frost covered everything: before you had run a mile it had formed in your hair and beard, on the fibres of your ...”