“... moves repeatedly surprised and wrong-footed friends and enemies alike, both at home and abroad. He may seem an improbable model for political strategising in the era of Twitter and Cambridge Analytica, but it is one of Cummings’s core convictions that sources which may seem, as he puts it, ‘very esoteric’ can turn out ...”

“... the US turned down Iran’s offer to discuss security matters, including the nuclear programme, in May 2003. It is highly unlikely that the present US administration would be interested in negotiating along these lines. Another possibility is for the Security Council to limit Iran’s right to enrich uranium to a level of, say, 5 per cent, sufficient for fuel ...”

“... critical examination of the causes of the events of 11 September and the role US foreign policy may have played. Another indictment of Middle East studies appeared in Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, published in October 2001 by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Kramer, who ...”

“... not the ordinary vocabulary of modern realism. We start to wonder if there may be such a thing as a gothic comedy of psychological manners. Certainly there are people here who try to steal or manage the emotional lives of others, and do it as a form of deluded kindness or wisdom. But there are even more people who will have no life at ...”

“... consumerism, an age whose dominant trope is anti-climax. ‘On Mr Milton’s Paradise Lost’ may nonetheless seem to confirm the stock views of Marvell and Milton: Marvell stands apart from the sublime solemnity of his friend, ironically distancing himself from his achievements. According to T.S. Eliot, Milton’s Puritan republicanism destroyed his ...”

“... feet across. This suggests that they were conceived together; some historians have thought they may have hung in the same room; the inventory almost says so, but not quite. It is striking that there is no trace of a pendant to Mars – the god’s singularity matters. But for the moment I want to focus on the quality of the two ...”

“... a whole category of art which, prior to any particular discriminations, is lost on him: try as he may, or may not, he can’t see much in it. This is a generic portrait of a critic who ‘doesn’t like contemporary art’, drawn to clarify a professional dilemma. What is this critic to do? Or what’s to be done with ...”

“... between a national electorate and its leader in those terms, as if the general election in May were somehow a showy matrimonial sequel to the royal yoking due in April. Especially when Blair’s speech leaves little doubt as to who’s wearing the trousers: and it’s not the British people. ‘Decent’ and ‘hard working’ we ...”

“... have led him to act as he has over these past ten years. Whatever judgment ‘the people’ may come to, any history worth the name records as fact only what has been done; it may if it wants speculate as to why what was done was done, but only drawing a careful line between the deed and the possible motive. For Blair ...”

“... They remain histories that trace structures of causation. They argue that this or that artwork may stand, in all its distinctive obduracy, as a crux in a sequence of socio-cultural developments. So it is with these essays, ostensibly. The piece on Poussin’s canvas of 1648 is accompanied by studies of Giotto frescoing the panel known as Joachim’s Dream ...”

“... that income, including plans to decarbonise by 2050. This process has now been accelerated: in mid-May, the EU announced a $210 billion plan to switch away from Russian energy sources over the next five years. For European countries, weaning themselves off Russian fuel is proving to be painfully expensive and has contributed to the price hikes. Even ...”

“... quelled religious enthusiasm in Europe. If national identities grow weaker, religious identities may harden and long-forgotten disputes re-ignite. Evangelical religion thrives on population mobility and social change: the frontierless European Community and the newly-liberated countries of Eastern Europe may both prove ...”

“... The power of Beethoven’s music is not enhanced one whit by our knowledge that he was deaf. We may be amazed – and yet, as Solomon suggests, this very affliction may have assisted his ‘escape’ into his own world. If this was one of the means by which such magnificent concentration was achieved, the concentration is ...”

“... in Trinidad; properly studied, those beginnings, as Shakespeare suggests in the following lines, may foretell the hatch and brood of time. The book is dedicated to the memory of his father. It is Naipaul’s way to offer an objective account of what, as a traveller, he sees and hears, yet he is always, quite deliberately but with a sort of modest ...”

“... aplomb in the world. As the recent chairman of Did you see? he smoothly concealed any distaste he may have felt for the more freakish performers on his viewing panel; and as the one-time pillar of Panorama he was not too pompous to play himself in Yes, Prime Minister and ask questions about the British sausage. His life has been pitched at an agreeable social ...”