“... On 1 December 1987 the New York Times ran a piece under the title ‘Yale Scholar’s Articles Found in Nazi Paper’. The scholar in question was the late Paul de Man, who had written these pieces during the early Forties before leaving Belgium for America. They were published in Le Soir, a newspaper of pro-Nazi sympathies, and contain many passages that can be read as endorsing what amounts to a collaborationist line ...”

“... surprise nearly everyone.When Sinatra’s new booking agency, GAC, persuaded the owners of New York’s Paramount Theatre to add him to its big New Year show, their driven young client had none of the star power of already signed performers like Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee; his billing read ‘Extra Added Attraction’, and for Sinatra this particular gig ...”

“... its appeal. Eraserhead might have vanished if it hadn’t been for Ben Barenholtz, the king of New York’s midnight movie scene, who had also popularised Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘acid Western’ El Topo and John Waters’s ‘filth epic’ Pink Flamingos. Waters – a direct contemporary but no eagle scout – was another early Lynchhead. Eraserhead ...”

“... who have done the best work on her project have been former students, including Howard Caygill and Peter Osborne, who together now teach at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University. (Gilroy too was Rose’s student before he moved to Stuart Hall in Birmingham. She was a ‘great’ teacher, he has said, and he followed her ...”

“... the British succumbed, largely as a result of war debts to the US. Jersey Standard and New York Standard were granted access to the old Ottoman lands (and membership of IPC) by Whitehall in 1922. By 1933, Standard Oil of California had acquired a massive concession from King Ibn Saud, extending from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. Within a ...”

“... is a sore head or a streaky patch on a window. Find the remedy, and it’s gone. Limbo dancing, Peter Hain’s sideburns, the Angry Brigade, King Crimson: these films are always so good on perky period souvenirs, so skilled at avoiding most emotions apart from the fake ones. Though actually, I wasn’t impressed by the period detail in Misbehaviour ...”

“... stories stand out is an indication that education does not work in this way for the majority.Peter Mandler​ ’s book The Crisis of the Meritocracy does not directly address these conceptual issues, but instead draws from official statistics, social surveys, longitudinal studies and similar sources in an effort to answer one specific historical ...”

“... a threshold Yeltsin’s regime was unable to cross. Moscow boasts more billionaires than New York, yet a flat income tax of 13 per cent has been introduced, at Yegor Gaidar’s urging. A highly regressive ‘unified social tax’ falls on those who can least afford it. Welfare benefits have been monetised and slashed. Key economic ministries remain in ...”

“... to wartime Moscow on Guy Burgess’s initiative, to find himself stranded and unwanted in New York instead. But, when told to make the best of his American contacts, he found himself in the perfect milieu. Ignatieff’s passages on this period are excellent. Berlin’s networking skills and, it’s not unfair to say, his ability to be all things to all ...”

“... sister of two leading Yiddish actors, Maurice and Fanny Waxman, whose roles on the London and New York stages included Hamlet and Medea. My father was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, grew up in Darlington, and always had a slight Northern accent. He was one of a large family: Abe; then Bec, the one girl; then my father, Philip, called Phil but Phishel at ...”

“... an arch with a kink at one end like a giant dog ball thrower, is, according to its designer Peter Jenkins, the first of its kind in the world. ‘I’d like to think that George Stephenson would have approached the challenge in a similar manner, laying the new railway infrastructure over the old,’ he told the Manchester Evening News. Even the Chinese ...”

“... as illustration. One day Franco Moretti and Carlo Ginzburg went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York together. Coming upon Vermeer’s A Maid Asleep, depicting a servant-girl drowsing at a table laden with fruit, a wine-glass lying on its side, a painting of Cupid on the wall above, and an empty chair half-swung towards a door half-open, implying the recent ...”

“... construction industry, bent coppers and old-style Kray hoodlums making overtures to the New York Mafia with their lawyers specialising in property and gambling tax. Much of this was documentary refraction: it had happened, it was happening, and it described the future we are now experiencing. According to a persistent urban myth, the gang that robbed ...”

“... resources and surveillance time monitoring such well-known left-wing subversives as Jack Straw and Peter Mandelson, as well as CND and Vietnam War protesters. More important, from a counter-terrorist perspective, it was deeply involved in the British state’s confrontation with modern Irish Republican terrorism. Until 1992, the Met Special Branch had sole ...”

“... pointed out, this arrangement is almost bound to have socially regressive effects. Brown quotes Peter Scott, the former vice-chancellor of Kingston University: ‘To rely on A-level grades alone is, in effect, further to privilege the already privileged, to give disproportionate rewards to those whose way in life has been smooth. The correlation between ...”