“... demanded by the hurricane-like imminence of a thickset general, obviously of high rank, wearing enormous horn-rimmed spectacles. He had just burst from a flagged staff-car almost before it had drawn up by the kerb. Now he tore up the steps of the building at the charge, exploding through the inner door into the hall. An extraordinary current of ...”

“... followed by lookalikes of the queen, Batman and the pope, among others. When Elton arrived, he was wearing an outfit covered in white marabou feathers – the trousers as well as the jacket – and matching hat. Four hundred white doves were meant to fly out of the grand pianos. (When they didn’t, Reid and Taupin ran around scaring the birds, which ...”

“... the mood took him, an advocate of cool. In Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude, Dick Pountain and David Robins define cool as a ‘new secular virtue’ – the official language of a private or subcultural rebelliousness retuned from generation to generation, as well as of worldwide commodity fetishism. According to Alan Liu, in The Laws of Cool, it’s a ...”

“... grant and has closed down. I remember very little about the production except that the actors were wearing heavy woollen costumes, which were no doubt suitable garb for an 11th-century Scottish castle but looked uncomfortably hot and itchy under the stage lights. As for my story, I wrote very little of it, and can remember even less. But my excitement had less ...”

“... and cities, supporting 1400 projects, far more than any other country in Europe. According to David Mackay, a former officer in the Parachute Regiment who was project manager of the Glasgow CityWatch CCTV system for two years, ‘so positive has central government support been that, by 1997, the bulk of Home Office expenditure on crime prevention was ...”

“... became sterner. Parallel to these shifts came another: sleeping naked gave way to the wearing of nightclothes, which came into use in Europe around the same time as the fork and the handkerchief. Elias suggests that the growing propensity to cover the body, in the bedroom as in the bathhouse, gave new significance to depictions of the naked body ...”

“... a great deal of activity. He organised round-ups of Jews and their deportation. He enforced the wearing of the Jewish star, which was sold at police stations and cost one month’s clothing ration. He created institutes to study race and provide a scientific basis for racial selection. He supervised the ‘Aryanisation’ of Jewish property, which meant its ...”

“... extended feature for Vanity Fair. We learn that Bob Dylan adored her in Raintree County and that David Lynch kissed her after the 1987 Oscars (she was a fan of Blue Velvet) and that she resented Andy Warhol for making millions by turning her face into a silk screen image. What the book doesn’t do is discuss Taylor’s film performances in any depth. This ...”

“... that brought down Morsi, while liberals sing the praises of their new saviour, the black beret wearing General al-Sisi, as he presides over the arrests of Muslim Brothers – ‘precautionary measures to avoid violence’, as ElBaradei delicately put it to the New York Times. The television host Bassem Youssef accused the Brothers of provoking the ...”

“... punishment and torture on indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans: we read of bodies in stocks wearing weighted cattle chains, labouring bodies wearing collars suspended with heavy weights, limbs pressed with sugar cane between the grinding stones of a mill, bodies tortured in the fields and barns of plantations. The ...”

“... came flapping into view. The huge speakers vibrated with ‘life’, then Whitney ‘came on’ wearing – or ‘wearing’ – a gold glittery dress and, in every sense that mattered, ‘being’ Whitney. The audience went completely wild and burst into tears. ‘Let’s pray for peace,’ Dead Whitney said, and ...”

“... podiums for the nu metal mosh pit and the older crowd follow artists such as Badly Drawn Boy and David Gray, whose work is not enhanced by MDMA. Nevertheless, like hash in the early 1970s, Ecstasy is cheap and easy to get hold of, and passed round through friends rather than bought from a street corner (this was acknowledged by the House of Commons Home ...”

“... The photo on the back of Bower’s book shows Branson sitting on the steps of one of his planes wearing shorts and a T-shirt that says ‘Now Boarding’. A few steps higher up are two women in bikinis whose bottom halves are emblazoned with the slogan ‘Down Under’. Branson has a cheeky grin and a thumb pointed at each. Still, it’s the same game. Like ...”

“... bright red, yellow and green blocks that may not be fingers at all, but something she is wearing. In the Eliot portrait of 1938, two hangings on the wall behind him give a taste of Lewis in a less objective mood. In 1938, the Royal Academy refused to hang the picture. They had spotted phallic references in the hangings. Wyndham Lewis’s paint is ...”

“... to bear arms ‘suitable to their condition’ it was protecting the gentry’s monopoly of sword-wearing. Gentlemen continued to wear swords in public places until the 1780s. They were asked to leave them behind when they entered the Assembly Rooms at Bath, but normally wore them to the theatre: a nimble thief once stole the Duke of Cumberland’s sword as ...”