“... There have been several UFO sightings of cigar-shaped vessels, including one seen over Paris in May. Many Oumuamua-watchers have also noticed the similarity between Oumuamua and the alien spaceship in Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, a cylindrical vehicle that turns out to be hollow and filled with strange machinery, including hybrid ...”

“... rebels. Morrison emerged as the compromise candidate, and became prime minister on 24 August. It may not have been an outright victory for Dutton, but it was certainly a failure for the moderate wing of the party: Morrison campaigned for a ‘No’ vote in the same-sex marriage referendum and, as immigration minister, launched a militarised campaign, known ...”

“... look of the year, and on Boxing Day, Greta Gerwig brought out a new cinematic version of Louisa May Alcott’s novel. What I found surprising in these books, especially after an adulthood of reading novels with almost no plot in which people rarely improve, is that change is possible, for the better, and even expected. It would be ridiculous to imagine that ...”

“... him about being the model for William Boot in Scoop, and he admitted, when I pushed him, that he may indeed have taken a few too many suitcases to Addis Ababa in 1936. ‘Evelyn overdid it,’ he said. ‘Overdoing it was rather his thing.’We sat upstairs under a huge portrait of Disraeli. Thatcher was across from me, wearing a blue, sparkly twinset and a ...”

“... the camera that it is 23 July and that she has been out of prison for a week and one day. On 24 May she says she is pregnant with twins and has been for 22 weeks. A little later she talks about a marriage, but we still don’t know where to place it, or her, on a chronology. We are seeing time in close-up and we don’t know what time it is. The woman is ...”

“... presa’ became:To every heart which the sweet pain doth move,And unto which these words may now be broughtFor true interpretation and kind thought,Be greeting in our Lord’s name, which is Love.Through Rossetti, Ezra Pound (who called Dante ‘a knower of dreams rather than a mixer among men’) and T.S. Eliot discovered Dante, and, through ...”

“... You can become concupiscent, like someone in a singles bar who knows that however unlikely success may seem, at least the desired object is not married and off the market. Unattached art must be judged without the crib of a museum label. It challenges you to make your own mind up. It allows you to think about possession.The icon which best gives visual form to ...”

“... an elegant world not so far from the one Boucher was recording in France. But this advertising art may be misleading. Devis’s group portraits were of a stiff, starchy sort, and in Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode the charm of a pretty interior can become a moral negative. There are no regular patterns of avenue, palace and barracks – the architecture of ...”

“... landscapes and attempts at large figure subjects, and complemented by his sister’s pictures – may, like those overlapping Bloomsbury memoirs in which alternative views allow one to guess at unshown dimensions, do something for his reputation.As a prelude to the Tate’s juxtaposition of brother and sister you can, until 15 October, see a small exhibition ...”

“... chief characters in the film are someone and no one, haunted either by who they were or what they may be one day: human, for example. The fauna of the film complete this impression: a dog with a swan’s head and neck, a pig with a chicken’s body. There is also an automobile with a horse’s head. These creations are the results of experiments conducted by ...”

“... ones a relief. In Wilkie’s case the sheer effort and time which went into one detailed painting may have told, but a look at his early work invites other thoughts. First, just as the late pictures show him reaching for the effects other men achieved, so it is necessary to look further afield than Holland for apt comparisons with the early ones. Wilkie, who ...”

“... and his fits of bad temper, which briefly make him look like a bad guy. The general effect may create in us a nostalgia for the edgy coherence of the first part. There is, though, a refrain that echoes through the film. Despite the importance of the architectural meaning of the title, the other meaning, the wrong meaning, is also intimately ...”

“... that a military dictatorship had been in power in the country since 1964, aided by the US, we may begin to feel a little baffled by all the rowdy joy. At this time, the government was already organising the disappearance of people it disapproved of. A further dark note is struck when a family planning to move to England for safety suggests that the Paivas ...”

“... and animals are spread as tapestry-like decorations over a background which fails to recede.One may doubt whether E.H. Gombrich, who died on 3 November, ever passionately liked, or was even very curious about, individual paintings, except in so far as they could illustrate the deeper matters on which he was so illuminating, in particular what goes on when ...”

“... a British Library exhibition that runs until 22 September, pulls you up as you look around. You may feel that you have stepped into the best provincial antique shop ever: Farrington reminds you that what you are looking at is material evidence of a punishing cultural encounter, driven by a desire for the smell, taste, colour and texture of exotic stuffs and ...”