“... were introduced by Carlyle’s first real friend, the bold and enthusiastic charlatan-in-training Edward Irving, who had been Jane’s Latin tutor when, as a much adored and adoration-craving nine-year-old, she had demanded that her father permit her to study as boys did. The tutoring had lasted only two years, but Irving met her again the year before he ...”

“... says Ishmael, and it’s obvious who he has in mind, ‘the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body.’ The smoke was foul. ‘It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the pit.’ The hellish character of ...”

“... before and since colonialism, they were also a trademark of the colonial era: some injuries, like burns from electric torture (in Diouri’s case, to the genitals), were the result of colonial technologies that successor regimes were happy to inherit. Most colonial possessions, Morocco included, won independence in the thick of the Cold War. Whether they ...”

“... inactive in the face of so much ‘corruption’. But that is the lot of many activist groupings. Edward Daffarn, a resident from the 16th floor who wrote many emails to the council, and Francis O’Connor, who wrote many of the blogs, were committed local agitators with a deep disgust at what the council and its TMO was failing to do for the poorer people of ...”