“... a nationalist, even racist spin: should Syriza or Podemos be seen to fail, right-wing populists may find the scene prepared for them. For now at least, though, it isn’t evident that Syriza has failed. While the creditors keep insisting that a ‘nominal’ debt reduction is impossible, the issue will remain on the table and, suitably disguised, will ...”

“... your mobile phone. Before it was assembled in a Chinese factory, the coltan in its capacitors may have been dug by miners in the Eastern Congo, where millions have died in a series of wars over ‘conflict minerals’, though we give this no more thought than previous generations of Westerners gave to the Congolese origins of the ivory in their piano ...”

“... was ‘begun, continued, and ended, under a long course of physic, and a great want of money’, may not tell you much worth knowing about the writing itself. Leo Damrosch’s biography from 2013 acknowledges the problem and skirts around those periods of Swift’s life where speculation would have to play a considerable part in filling in the ...”

“... she still lives in Cergy.I’ve pieced this together from my reading, and googling, and I may well have things wrong. Ernaux hasn’t written about her life in a neat this-then-that sort of way. Reading her is like getting to know a friend, the way they tell you about themselves over long conversations that sometimes take years, revealing things ...”

“... anyone who wasn’t Syrian, Iraqi or Afghan; later, everyone. Since then, while the rhetoric may vary, the actions taken have been broadly consistent: a shoring up of the old border regime, the toughening of conditions inside Europe to deter migrants, and the further outsourcing of European border control to governments in Asia, the Middle East and ...”

“... during ‘cut-backs’ which shelved many FTP projects. When he made the cover of Time Magazine in May 1938 (as Shotover in Heartbreak House), they called him a ‘marvellous boy’. But already the snipers were getting into position. Welles devised the War of the Worlds programme (in one week) partly as a spoof to deflate the impregnable authority of ...”

“... Elizabeth Sweeting). His ‘marriage’ to Peter Pears, begun shortly after Mrs Britten’s death, may be partly understood in this light (Pears’s singing voice, it was noted, was uncannily similar to Mrs Britten’s), as may his lifelong willingness to be looked after, sometimes dominated, by a series of maternal ...”

“... and Fury, about the pundit class in Washington, Safire conceded that ‘yes, psychologically, he may have been seeking to minimise the relative importance of the crimes committed by his former boss, with this silliness.’ So now I’ve stopped ‘gating’ and will never try it again, however tempting the locution. As both these books in quite different ...”

“... reading the London Times. The balloon glass before him had sunk to a low tide. ‘Mr Yeates? May I venture to intrude? I am a journalist. Name of Hunt. The Irish Times.’ Lennox wearily levered his torso forward to look down at Hunty’s brown and punctured shoe tops. As slowly he lowered himself backward to look strabismally into Hunty’s boyish ...”

“... herself nurtures in them the technical skills which will fit them in the modern world, but which may unfit them – as they did for Paul – for home. Anton, the elder, inherits Eduard’s old camera, and works in a film propaganda unit during the war. Like his father, he learns skills in war which will make his fortune after it; like his father too, he ...”

“... good children were given marzipan fruits while bad ones found their shoes filled with coal; on 1 May, the queenship of the Virgin Mary, bunches of lily of the valley were exchanged. Joan of Arc was one adoptive saint and heroine among many whose memory was kept with incense, flowers, singing and processions on her feast day, another spring festival since it ...”

“... he was, but of what he found at hand on the North Shore of Long Island between October 1922 and May 1924, when he was living in a comfortable cottage at 6 Gateway Drive and writing in an office above the garage. Scholars have long known that the leading women in Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker, were based on Fitzgerald’s early girlfriend, Ginevra ...”

“... On​ 23 May 2014, Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old college dropout, became the world’s most famous ‘incel’ – involuntary celibate. The term can, in theory, be applied to both men and women, but in practice it picks out not sexless men in general, but a certain kind of sexless man: the kind who is convinced he is owed sex, and is enraged by the women who deprive him of it ...”

“... soldier takes any notice of it, he continues to play his game of darts or draughts or whatever it may be. When, on the other hand, someone tunes into Lord Haw-Haw, the whole room gets up and gathers round the wireless.’ The War Office wrote to Frederick Ogilvie, who had succeeded Reith as the BBC’s director-general, worrying that Joyce’s ...”

“... of his translation, and the result greatly refreshes, sometimes productively estranges, words that may now be too familiar to those who grew up with the King James Bible. The Pentateuch, or Torah, contains the great narratives of our monotheistic infancy. It tells the stories of the creation; of Adam and Eve and their children, Cain and Abel; of the Flood and ...”