“... from Westminster and returned to Scotland by a young nationalist writer and singer called Ian Hamilton. Another opportunity arose not long afterwards, when the Post Office announced that the logogram EIIR would in future appear on all postboxes. Henderson was at a meeting held in Sorley MacLean’s flat to discuss how Scotland might respond. He and Bobby ...”

“... to economic stagnation. Either way America had nothing to fear.In his cool-headed history, Schism, Paul Blustein takes issue with both these interpretations. So too do Bob Davis and Lingling Wei in their more journalistic account, Superpower Showdown. With hindsight it is clear that the policymakers of the 1990s and early 2000s did get some things wrong. They ...”

“... definitive edition of Rochester’s poems was made by Vivian de Sola Pinto for Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1953. In 1968 David Vieth produced an edition of 76 poems plus eight more listed as ‘Possibly by Rochester’; 75 of his attributions and usually his choices of copy-text were accepted by Keith Walker for his edition for Blackwell’s in 1984; to the 75 ...”

“... earlier on the first Index Librorum Prohibitorum, issued in the Counter-Reformation pontificate of Paul IV, on the suspect grounds that they had fuelled the corruption of French politics. In the preface to the Six Books of the Commonwealth of 1576, Jean Bodin talks of ‘the delightful principles of Machiavelli, who lays down impiety and injustice as dual ...”

“... spread by the apostles themselves – it is noteworthy that Gibbon has very little to say about St Paul – it was during their lifetimes that it had been spread by the miraculous gifts they had received on the day of Pentecost. Chelsum suspected Gibbon of following the tactics of Conyers Middleton, a crucial figure in all this controversy, who in his Free ...”

“... he was older, he took snapshots of ordinary things and put them in albums (‘Pair of pants – Hamilton, Montana – 1916’). He also became an obsessive drawer of maps, suggesting both a love of order and a fascination with the idea of magically containing the vastness of the world within a formal outline; he liked to repeat things. What is certain is ...”

“... Britain and France as gangsters. What I remember were the things that made us laugh: the column by Paul Jennings that had a tongue-twister about ‘tuskless rustics eating crustless Ruskets’; the strip cartoon by Jules Feiffer; the witty reviews by Kenneth Tynan of plays that we had next to no chance of seeing; the house adverts by the subversive estate ...”

“... wrote William Redfield in Letters from an Actor. ‘He is even less gifted than Richard Burton, Paul Scofield, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud. But he is still the definitive actor of the 20th century. Why? Because he wanted to be.’ Holden’s book never reconciles his notion of Olivier the actor-as-onion with its pages of evidence that the force that ...”

“... the colour of spring.’ Champcommunal was more fashion-conscious than Todd; she knew people like Paul Poiret – the first person to design a dress, it’s said, that a woman could put on by herself. It’s not clear how the early editors were chosen, or what qualifications were expected in a country where to be fashionable had long meant to be vulgar and ...”

“... his ‘privacy’. He fended off journalists and biographers, sometimes in the courts: Ian Hamilton was commissioned by Random House to write a biographical study subtitled ‘A Writing Life’, but permission to quote from Salinger’s unpublished letters was denied by the courts and Hamilton’s book ended up being ...”

“... since no intellectual journal back then was complete without a Riesman snorkel dive; a piece by Paul de Man (remember him?) which begins on the stirring note, ‘Ever since the war, American criticism has remained relatively stagnant’; and an omnibus review of four books by Northrop Frye. ‘Notes on “Camp”’ transmits on an entirely different ...”

“... I JUST TURN/AND/RUN.’ This is the Art Zone, so the calligraphic street poem, the post-Hamilton Finlay fence doodle, is signed with a corporate logo: ‘LACK’. The strategy is not quite as throwaway as it seems: Drummond has noticed layers of primer beneath the dripping runs of yellow. More rehearsed spontaneity. That’s good. And the words ...”

“... of local universities through huge budget cuts. The city was horribly gerrymandered in the 2010s. Paul Ryan, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and a native of Janesville, Wisconsin, acted as a wrecking ball on social care in the area and was a friend to people who believe that tax cuts are evidence of enlightenment. The Democrats had grown ...”

“... from an outer borough. New Yorkers hardly have a bias against aspiring newcomers. The musical Hamilton exalts a classic New York story of a brilliant young immigrant rising in a mercantile culture. (‘I hear it’s highly overrated,’ President-elect Trump tweeted last November after the cast addressed Vice President-elect Mike Pence, as he was leaving ...”

“... worst) of them combined the secrecy of Whitehall with the languor of Fitzrovia. It was Patrick Hamilton in conversation with George Smiley down a blind alley off Rathbone Place, with froth sliding down the insides of pint tumblers and lipsticked fags in every ashtray. Men such as Gamlin practically lived in Langham Place: their outer bounds were ...”