“... uppers, dances the bread rolls like shoes and eats his boot, twirling the laces like spaghetti; Jan Švankmajer, the Czech surrealist and filmmaker, has animated shoes as wide-open cannibal mouths. I’d claim there’s a deeper affinity between the way you’re shod and the way you talk and who you are: that a brogue is an under-ear ...”

“... Furman of Russia, Gáspár Tamás of Hungary and Slavoj Žižek of Yugoslavia, born in the 1940s; Jan Zielonka of Poland, born in the 1950s; and Ivan Krastev of Bulgaria in the 1960s.1 All save Zielonka were originally trained in philosophy, which – this being Eastern Europe – was no impediment to wider interests: Furman started his career as a historian ...”

“... of the Yaqui Indians, these frail old women are the end of the line. Hitler was not so far off the mark in imagining a day when we might survey Jewish lands and artifacts without thinking too hard about the manner of their owners’ disappearance. Yet, more than the Holocaust and more than the ‘barbaric impenetrability of the past’, which Jacobson reflects ...”

“... the seers of New Labour. Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century declaims the title of a manifesto by Mark Leonard, the party’s foreign policy wunderkind.2 ‘Imagine a world of peace, prosperity and democracy,’ he enjoins the reader. ‘What I am asking you to imagine is the “New European Century”.’ How will this entrancing prospect come ...”

“... Cadbury sign – and by Amazon warehouses bigger than any of them. Factories on the flat horizon mark the land, but they aren’t landmarks.The two new Mondelez factories in Skarbimierz, one for gum and one for chocolate, have roofed over seven and a half acres. The chocolate factory is a giant shed, a blank oblong with a series of slightly higher blank ...”

“... tons of the Arditti Quartet, Kurt Cobain, Suzy Solidor, John McCormack, Cretan rembétika music, Jan and Dean, Los Pinguinos del Norte, Shostakovich film scores, Some Girls, Wunderlich doing Butterfly (in luscious, spittle-ridden German), Cuban contredanses, Planet Squeezebox, some croaky old Carter Family, Morton Feldman, Beatrice Lillie (and fairies at the ...”

“... is so cheeky. Now we’ve read Dylan Thomas, haven’t we, and some John Cowper Powys. And Jan Morris we’ve read. But who else is there?’ ‘You could try Kilvert, maam,’ said Norman. ‘Who’s he?’ ‘A vicar, maam. Nineteenth century. Lived on the Welsh borders and wrote a diary. Fond of little girls.’ ‘Oh,’ said the Queen, ‘like ...”

“... a death, a very public one, and to ignore it, or let it go in a cloud of unknowing, would fail to mark their attempts at survival. It is hard to think about, but these people all went up to the top of the tower looking for a chance. Your browser does not support html5 video. 'Raymond was looking after them'.Most of the stories are hard to bear. The ...”