“... Waltons with such longing and attachment that I felt more a part of these families than my own. Michael Landon was my father, and I was Laura Ingalls. Even when Mary Ingalls went blind, I thought I’d rather be her than myself. As far as I was concerned, the American happy family dream was the only dream worth having. And so, I became a Mormon. Wearing a ...”

“... with those in the Jungle at Calais, but their fate certainly prefigures that of the forgotten white working class in the US and Europe. In The Golovlyov Family (1880), Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin describes how after the abolition of serfdom a sort of doom hung over the minor gentry as ‘divorced from the stream of life, and without a position of ...”

“... in 1704 when his clay crucible (containing kaolinite) was transformed by intense heat into white ceramic. In 1669, phosphorus was isolated by a German alchemist, Hennig Brand, who distilled large volumes of urine, believing it to contain the crucial agent of transmutation, until he was left with a soft metallic substance that glowed, ignited in air and ...”

“... bad it looked on the surface, it was even worse behind the scenes. The long-standing Trump-watcher Michael Wolff, who positioned himself as tittle-tattle-in-chief during those years, wrote a series of books – Fire and Fury, Siege, Landslide – describing the endless tantrums, dressings down and sulks that took place inside the Oval Office. No one was safe ...”

“... The anti-immigrant zealot John Kelly – once considered the only ‘adult’ in the White House when he was chief of staff – joined Caliburn’s board immediately after leaving government.*In a televised interview with Vice President Pence, the host reads from an article about the camps in which the children are described as ...”

“... and might not; and then, in noticeably poorer country, Irish Republic tricolours, their green-white-orange optimistically symbolising reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant. Signs reading UDA and RIRA (both, in our understanding, illegal organisations) suggested that Ireland is not quite there yet, as did our first roadblock, between Armagh and ...”

“... he gave respect and appreciation to such various talents as Ian Fleming and Dick Francis, Michael Innes and Gladys Mitchell – all British writers. It is hard to believe that he hadn’t read, at some time between its first British publication in 1943 and the writing of ‘High Windows’ in 1967, a book by the writer regarded by many as the American ...”

“... publicity ‘toxic’ and mistrusted the incestuousness of New York literary circles: ‘great white sharks fighting over a bathtub, you know?’ He had other reasons for wanting to stay out west. A former ‘near great’ junior tennis player and adolescent ‘math-wienie’ – in the words of an essay written for Harper’s in 1991 – he loved the ...”

“... buffalo, eland, impala, leopard, lion, warthog and waterbuck. Handy information, too, that ‘white rhino are sometimes allocated for culling by the Natal Parks Board’ and that in South Africa ‘trophy fees are only charged for animals bagged or “wounded and lost”.’ The politics of the guide’s author and intended readers is indicated in the ...”

“... Seabrook says, as Kosoville). Walking with Seabrook along the shore at Margate, subjected to the white noise of puns, submerged quotations, barks of self-intoxicated laughter, is to understand the manifold potentialities of the word ‘front’. North Sea, First War, BNP, con, flash. Seabrook is a very mouthy writer, his rude tongue perpetually thrust into ...”

“... The best book I know on the relationship between sporting culture and success is Moneyball, Michael Lewis’s account of the 2002 Oakland A’s baseball team.† The argument is compellingly simple: sports teams are run like gentlemen’s clubs rather than businesses, and clubs don’t base their business decisions on facts but on codes and ...”

“... she quoted an exchange between Joan of Arc and her interrogators about her vision of the archangel Michael: ‘How did you know that it was St Michael?’ ‘By the way he spoke and his language of angels.’ ‘How did you know it was the language of angels?’ ‘I soon believed it was. I wanted to believe that it ...”

“... were not auspicious, and we were concerned from the outset that our composition – all white, almost all male, almost all lawyers and London-based – would undermine our ability to speak with any legitimacy. The Conservatives had come into government committed to tearing up the Human Rights Act, an early product of the previous Labour government ...”

“... played basketball, which made him different from his predecessors. Rhodes is a 5’ 7” balding white man, a worrier and a workaholic who tries to unwind with a drink and a cigarette – a natural fit for golf, in other words. But he was drawn to the basketball player. For eight years Rhodes worked as Obama’s deputy national security adviser and his chief ...”

“... of Oftel smiles up in soft brown light as he dangles in the mirror on a green office wall. Michael Meyer of Emess Lighting is dissected by the blinds that cut across him and then reassembled from outside – his shirtsleeved figure looming like a target in the formulaic eye of some Hollywood assassin. As for London and Scottish Marine Oil’s Chris ...”