“... Whitman (‘the revolt of the Bohemian temperament, with its poetry of crude naturalism’), and William James (‘an impassioned empiricism ... declaring the universe to be wild and young’). The Californian ‘humorists’ referred to by Santayana were the product, primarily, of a distinct historical phenomenon – the mining towns which sprang up during ...”

“... to scaling the highest mountains, collecting the most species, and above all to standing where no (white) man had ever stood before, finding organisms hitherto ‘unknown to science’ or hacking his way through trackless jungle. Such a burning ambition to achieve glory, especially by testing himself physically to the limit, is not obvious from Wilson’s ...”

“... from its war against Vietnam. The Middle East file fell by default to the then secretary of state, William Rogers, a conventional WASP public servant, Second World War veteran, lawyer and former attorney general. To the annoyance of Kissinger, who loathed him, Rogers took the job seriously. The Rogers Plan of December 1969 delivered a ceasefire in the costly ...”

“... the average Hollywood day. Here he is describing one of his boss’s difficulties: Mia had a big white cat named Malcolm that she adored. She was always talking sign language to the cat, who was deaf. Mia’s obsession with Malcolm was bad enough, but the sign language really got on Frank’s nerves. He didn’t mind cats in general, but he came to despise ...”

“... This shameful state of affairs was legitimised in 2005 by Tony Blair in the White Paper Controlling Our Borders: Making Migration Work for Britain: ‘Tolerance [is] under threat from those … abusing our hospitality.’ Faced with a moral panic about alien hordes pouring into Britain from the Russian Empire, the politicians’ response ...”

“... Decades after his visit, he set a class at Yale the task of redesigning Le Corbusier’s gleaming white house, the Villa Savoye, retaining the energy of its plan and composition but using traditional materials and techniques. Whatever did or did not happen in Marseille, it didn’t stop Krier from going to London in 1968 to work for James Stirling. Often ...”

“... you know; learn what you need to know. (The corn-rows are a nice touch, since they can signify white hippies or African American pride; there were lawsuits about them – could employers ban them? – during the 1980s.) It is advice that, followed to the letter, would make anyone more aware of politics, economics and history. And it is advice that, taken ...”

“... Geronimo Rex – a disorganised redneck version of The Adventures of Augie March – won the William Faulkner Prize and a nomination for the National Book Award when it came out in 1976. His 1978 short-story collection, Airships, was even more successful, winning two prizes, but the increasingly fragmented and sometimes mediocre short novels and story ...”

“... trends. For Taeuber, this meant the paintings of Gauguin and the Nabis, the work and thought of William Morris, and the radically reductive patterning seen in tribal art. In 1910 she moved to Munich to attend the Teaching and Research Studio for Applied and Fine Arts, known as the Debschitz School after its founder, Wilhelm von Debschitz. He too took his ...”

“... marble sculpture looming above, ‘It was the second worst thing Lincoln ever watched.’Internal White House documents predict three thousand American deaths a day by the end of May. The president tweets: ‘Getting great reviews, finally, for how well we are handling the pandemic.’ He retweets that the Trump Turnberry golf course has been named by Golf ...”

“... but especially in ‘Kit Inspection’ the robotic nature of the figures is reminiscent of William Roberts, while the formal shaping of the mosquito nets in ‘Reveille’ might have been done by C.R.W. Nevinson. In relation to style, Spencer was apparently untouched by modern influences from Europe. Apart from these panels recording military life ...”

“... in order to get closer to this unattainable Altidorian Gray, who though he is at his best in white jeans can ‘ironise’ even a pair of khakis, leggy piece of work that he is. Like Hollinghurst’s great first book, The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star has many characters but few women. The author takes pains to greet them and make them feel ...”

“... strong anti-Voorstand speech, evoking ‘the sharp-toothed blue-coated Mouse as a paranoid – its white-gloved finger hovering above a button which might destroy the planet’. The first half of the book, then, offers a series of different and constantly surprising takes on the theme of cultural imperialism, the notion of art as a political weapon whether in ...”

“... that matter – spotting conspiracies where others see epidemics: no less a man of the people than William Cobbett was adamant that Asiatic cholera itself was a fiction invented by the powers-that-be to hold the masses in terror. Indeed, as Steve Watkins underlines in his book, the Left in many of its moods has traditionally suspected that the medical ...”

“... figure sitting alarmingly high up on the temple’s architrave: a self-portrait by the artist, William Pars, the designated draughtsman on the Ionian Expedition of 1764-66. In reality Pars was paying as much attention to the charm of the courtyard scene as he was to the antiquities, though not in a way that pleased everyone: as his fellow traveller Richard ...”