“... from the big-lunged belt of her talent show days: whimpering and coquettish, with a Michael Jackson hiccup. On ‘Baby One More Time’ it was paired with a jarring three-note riff and an instantly famous video shot in a high school, resetting the pop clocks with a controlled explosion of scrunchies, crop tops and love hearts. For a moment in 1999, the ...”

“... trade unions pressed hard for industrial and even national economic planning: a full employment bill that would legally oblige the government to guarantee jobs, either by creating them in the public sector or by encouraging private investment; a new development bank to help steer capital to ageing sectors of American industry and to help new ones get ...”

“... The Brides in the Bath murderer George Smith and John Christie of Rillington Place fitted the bill, while the Kray Brothers became tabloid proto-celebrities even as they were ordering gangland rivals to be shot or hacked to death. But there were limits, and in 1966 the horrors that came out during the Moors murders trial of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady ...”

“... unctuousness of American political manners – someone who’d lived through Ronnie and W. and Bill – could register the depth of the transgression. That’s why my jaw dropped. What was politics to be if it was conducted like this? Where were we going? What was it in the new era that called for – rewarded – this kind of desublimation? US ...”

“... painting and its feverish gestures; mainstream critics, who had finally come around to Jackson Pollock and company, were not happy about this turn of events. In 1949 Life had showcased Pollock under the banner: ‘Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?’ In 1964 the same magazine profiled Lichtenstein under the heading: ‘Is He ...”

“... known as redlining – that had especially pernicious effects in Northern cities. The GI Bill was locally administered, which gave racist petty bureaucrats every opportunity to discriminate.It would be easier to come to terms with the past if Americans could contrive to label one particular period or decision as the paradigmatic crime of a criminal ...”

“... for almost thirty years, over which time it had attracted some notable members, including Jackson Pollock, Richard Price and Judy Collins. But its more disturbing practices had passed unnoticed by the wider world until the Voice ran its exposé. Even then, as members defected and word spread of the grotesque cruelties perpetrated in the name of its ...”

“... Britain, where, as a South African, he is banned from TV, but bigger than Springsteen or Michael Jackson in France). What would Danton have thought of the Revolution being commemorated by a left-wing South African singing Zulu rock in the South Pacific? Perhaps it’s best we don’t know. One longs, at times, for the more considered attitude of Mao ...”

“... the list of names she spools out is not only their number and even distinction (Robert Lowell, Jackson Pollock, Spender), but how little the revelations of their being subsidised by the CIA affected their prestige. Huge sums were spent setting up radio stations, concerts, travelling exhibitions, academic and intellectual conferences. Stravinsky, Samuel ...”

“... Clintons were race-baiters,’ which Evans called ‘absurd defamation’. Why absurd? When Bill Clinton suggested that Obama was unelectable by comparing him with Jesse Jackson, his meaning was oblique but easily understood; on 7 May last year, when Hillary Clinton said that, in the two primaries taking place at that ...”

“... had long been on notice of Mr Crossman’s intention to publish and could have brought in a Bill to deal with the problem – if one existed. In my view, those were essential considerations. If Parliament has enacted law whose use the Crown finds awkward, it is not for courts to provide an easier way – least of all when freedom of expression is ...”

“... deadlines in the phased demilitarisation set out in Thaci’s undertaking. General Sir Michael Jackson, the KFOR commander, to whom the undertaking was given, has said in effect that full disarmament is a pipe-dream, but he’s confident that some sort of demilitarisation schedule will be completed and he’s prepared to stretch a date or two on the ...”

“... to a deep admiration for handicraft (though never his own), conceived a ceramic Michael Jackson and chimp Bubbles and hired expert Italian artisans to fabricate it; the result is a centrepiece of the Broad Collection. He could never have executed such work himself; but it was his idea. Was Disney such an artist? Well, he wasn’t exactly like any of ...”

“... York and Canada. The modelling school. Selling Russian cars on the US market. I’m trying to get Bill Clinton involved in a green project converting waste to energy: a friend of a friend was at college with Hillary.’ Everyone you meet in Little Russia seems to have another business on the side. At the Cosmos party, doctors I talked to turned out to have a ...”

“... of one city.The principle of Public-Private Partnership was enshrined in the Government’s GLA Bill, and has remained central to Blair and Prescott’s plans for the Tube. Both Frank Dobson and Glenda Jackson endorsed it in their bids for the Labour candidacy. Despite the claims of some of its opponents, PPP for the ...”