“... them teenagers – advising multinational corporations have little doubt that what is big in Japan may well soon be big over here, too, at least among teens and pre-teens, who spend the most money on consumer knick-knacks. It is remarkable that throughout Japan’s recent economic decline, one of its biggest exports has been something rather less tangible than ...”

“... to do. But the idea that yoking ‘ain’t for real’ suggests something larger, too. Black kids may be able to lord it over white ones in Brooklyn, but that isn’t the case elsewhere. After his mother’s disappearance, Dylan finds a new protector in Mingus Rude, a mixed-race boy who moves to Dean Street when Dylan is in fifth grade. Like Dylan, Mingus is ...”

“... of the Earthling, the Mekon says, disaster if experienced aright can be as pleasurable, indeed it may be more so, than any mere paradise, whose quality . . . and here the Mekon banks away, then comes zipping back, . . . contains a level of inherent boredom most Venusians, at least, deplore. I jut my famous chin. Perhaps a man of my renown should take ...”

“... Litvinenko’s death found a trail of the isotope extending from Moscow to London via Hamburg. In May, Scotland Yard announced that Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB and FSB agent, was wanted for murder and the Crown Prosecution Service began extradition proceedings against him. Russia has refused extradition on the grounds that its constitution does not allow ...”

“... brief moment of politics without party and state was repeated in a slightly different register in May 1968. Understood biographically, the category of the ‘event’ is Badiou’s attempt to make sense of the experience of novelty and rupture that accompanied the événements of 1968. At its simplest, Badiou’s general question is: what is novelty? What is ...”

“... for so long against the creation of a native clergy, but dismisses racism as an explanation. This may be an anachronistic notion: early modern Iberian sources define the Chinese as ‘white’, but the chores through which Jesuit novices were supposed to learn humility were described in one early 18th-century account of college life in Portugal as being ...”

“... such as Gerrit van Honthorst responded to Caravaggio. Christ before the High Priest (1617) may be a familiar fixture of the National Gallery but in this company its candlelit Jesus shines out as a beacon of intelligent non-violent resistance. The relation of this Dutch positivity to developments in Rome may be partly ...”

“... of his portrayal of objects and rituals indicating the Jewish origins of Christianity – it may well be because of his friendship with Van Almaegien. He appears to have been very knowledgeable about the Jewish gnosticism from which early Christianity arose. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was an adept of the radical heretical Movement of the Free ...”

“... for his Republican rivals during the primaries, but then they were talking to Republicans, who may see bullying as a fact of life, feel a bit bullied themselves, and indeed nominated the candidate who sold himself as a national bully. The Democrats ask: do you want your children looking up to a president who’s a bully? Children were ever part of the ...”

“... of a potash mine in the Thuringian forest. This is where American troops found the coffin in May 1945; in Operation Bodysnatch, they discreetly transported it to Marburg and then, seven years later, allowed it to be quietly buried in the chapel of a castle near Hechingen. Following the reunification of Germany, Frederick could finally be interred where ...”

“... surges up out of almost nowhere. Sometimes it is the only sort available, and to believe in it may be the only way of getting things done. The existence of Crudo, the first novel by Olivia Laing, who has written three books of non-fiction, was first announced on Twitter on 1 August 2017: Tipsy over dinner, I have come up with a quartet of novels which I am ...”

“... than the ruins of Ephesus or Leptis Magna.Walcott imagined Port au Spain as ‘how Athens may have been before it became a cultural echo’, but in Trinidad too, the neoclassical echo of imperialism obtrudes on the green lawns and pink blossoms of Queen’s Park Savannah. Architraves in the tropics are no more inauthentic as evocations of antiquity ...”

“... hotels with sea views whose faded grandeur make them ideal for conversion into care homes. Last May, seventeen residents died from Covid-19 in one such care home in Margate, but mass deaths in care homes were a scandal all over Britain and hardly peculiar to Thanet.A more likely reason for the rapid spread is that many people had good reasons for not ...”

“... Labour council was forced to reduce its spending by £45.4 million and sacked 730 staff. In May 2019, the Conservatives won the local elections, taking power for the first time in forty years. In December, the new council trumpeted that it was setting its ‘most optimistic budget in a decade’ and planned no further ‘significant’ cuts till at ...”

“... to be safe. In principle, this does not give rise to any constitutional problems, although it may insufficiently protect human rights. European countries were deemed safe by the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004. The inclusion of Greece was considered by the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords – the forerunner of the ...”