“... newsworthy events. A rogue Japanese trader had out-Leesoned Leeson by losing a billion dollars on Wall Street without his employers noticing; Clinton had successfully, as it seemed, bombed the Serbs and blackmailed the Israelis to the peace table; Humphrey the missing Downing Street cat had been found. What the Times chose to lead with on Wednesday morning ...”

“... limit to what she can achieve’ as a writer, is more debatable. Born in 1882, the young Virginia Stephen grew up in a society in which service, either giving or receiving it, was the defining relationship of domestic life, particularly for women. By 1850, Light tells us, 80 per cent of servants were female and they were mostly answerable to the mistress of ...”

“... however, has results unpredictable by anyone. Think of the guidance given to a falling marble by a wall bristling with pegs: the slightest change in how you drop the marble makes it bounce down a different sequence of pegs, ending in a different spot. In developing this theme, Bohm and Hiley introduced a highly unpopular element: the effect of the pilot waves ...”

“... interests. Work on the Apocrypha continued, he became an authority on medieval stained glass and wall paintings, and he began systematically to make the notes on medieval manuscripts which were to be the foundation of his greatest monument – the series of catalogues of the entire medieval manuscript holdings of the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Cambridge ...”

“... about, browses the lush grass, chomps mango leaves and pieces of paper, or sprawls against a wall, jaws slowly working over (it seems) nothing, its hard-boiled yellow eyes suggesting mystic withdrawal. Its grossness, in profile, makes one think of a cow. But when small boys or bored askaris tease it, it is transformed, it is doglike. One takes evasive ...”

“... are fewer Ivorian students in France, and fewer foreign visitors to Ivory Coast. Since the Berlin Wall crumbled, a new burst of globalisation has transformed sub-Saharan Africa. In the absence of an overhaul of French policy in Africa, a comprehensive Paristroika, the Franco-African bloc has been reconfigured by a wave of democratisation in the early ...”

“... beside you.’ I always did keep it beside me, as it turned out. It glowed for years on my bedroom wall between the Communion certificate and a picture of Marilyn Monroe leaning over a veranda in The Seven-Year Itch. I’ve always associated that crucifix with the break-up of my mother and father’s marriage. I used to lie back in the darkness of that damp ...”

“... were thick: Caruso, Toscanini, Stravinsky. Later Barry Manilow played piano in the basement (no wall thick enough). The building is beautifully described by Bellow in Seize the Day. The Chelsea makes many more star appearances, but it’s the denizens of the place, their celebrity and sheer numbers – from Mark Twain through several generations of ...”

“... reinvented as a Vietnam-vintage Irish citizen, removes all the offending oil paintings from the wall: jewelled landscapes in oil; lively, naive renderings of the headland on which the cottages have been built. Expressionist weather systems have been brought indoors, a wall of light in the smokey darkness. These endearing ...”

“... first to provide a basic income for unsaleably modern painters, and secondly to make furniture, wall decorations, textiles and ornaments in a spirit which would repair the rift which had grown between modern painting and the decorative arts. Fry’s model was the Italian Renaissance artist who could paint a wall or chest ...”

“... down the street and trying to imagine living here. Today, though, there is a girl weeping by my wall and trying to get into a car. Now her boyfriend comes up, a tall young man in shorts with a muscular face. They get in the car and he puts his arm round her, but she starts to argue, banging her hand on her knee and gesturing with the fingers of the hand ...”

“... people like me directing films, I would do anything. Working with Karel was special. Just so nice. Stephen Frears (film director): In 1965, I was working at the Royal Court in London, which was a bit like being on call to the Borgias, a place full of brilliant and terrifying men. Then Karel came to direct a play by the Italian playwright Franco Brusati. His ...”

“... combat zones – ‘and turned into an area known to us as “India”,’ says Lance Sergeant Stephen Phipps. ‘We then made our way through the al-Mukatil al-Araby district. I’m not sure if we drove to Green 5 – the streets were getting quieter.’ The patrol was about forty kilometres from Camp Abu Naji and the vehicles trundled along a dimly lit ...”

“... to be. A boy is playing a handheld video game, all shoot-outs and heads splattered against the wall. The masked and threatening bankrobber is shocked. ‘I’m going to talk to your father,’ he says. Later, asked if he was afraid of the robber, the boy says not at all, and adds, as a person in a Spike Lee film should: ‘I’m from Brooklyn.’ When the ...”

“... the only country that regularly makes major advances in military technology. Decisions reached on Wall Street and in Washington reverberate around the world. Corporate America, the regulatory infrastructure that supports it and the pension funds that propel it, are the dominant influences on economic policy in Europe, Asia, South America and elsewhere, not to ...”