“... imagery, poetry, metaphysics and art of the day. Well, we are all able to make a quantum jump and may share with Heisenberg his uncertainty. But this is a mere borrowing of words. A concern with abstraction, release from convention, a re-examination of orthodoxy – these can be encountered on both sides. But in the absence of a researched attempt to explore ...”

“... town of Forli to sabotage the war effort, he was sent to prison for five months. His Socialism may not have had any deep philosophical base, but neither was it always merely theoretical. Yet when a million Italians took to the streets in ‘Red Week’ in June 1914, and Mussolini himself saw revolution awaiting only some dramatic event such as the death of ...”

“... light on the probable African love affair, notes that Haggard had a Jewish grandmother (which may have contributed to his racial attitudes), and uncovers the identity of Haggard’s great love. Higgins’s attitude to his subject, unfortunately, is more that of a hobbyist than a critical biographer: he proudly relates how he tracked down Haggard’s old ...”

“... superiority of Indo-European-speaking peoples linger on. The Aryan warlords in their chariots may be out of fashion, but the latest dogma, which Bernal calls the ‘Model of Autochthonous Origin’, is a modified Aryan model. It postulates that the inhabitants of Greece have been speaking Indo-European languages ever since the beginning of the ...”

“... of the present Queen, Majesty. The point about these books is that they are rather jolly. They may not tell you anything earth-shaking that you did not know before, since their main message is that the Prince of Wales/Queen is alive and well and, on the one hand, just like us and, on the other, absolutely different: but they are well-written and full of ...”

“... that they cannot earn. I doubt if this is more than an a priori prejudice, but however that may be, the objections to Adams cannot be the same as those to Tolkien. Whatever we are being seduced by, it is not the blandishment of an Edwardian nursery tale: what is at work here is a powerful, often macabre and perhaps somewhat disordered imagination. Part ...”

“... sanitary reformers, enlightened local councillors and the odd crusading local newspaper editor, may well turn out to be one of the noblest achievements of the Victorian ...”

“... is paid are, in the words of the subtitle, ‘interpreters of our cultural tradition’. It may be stretching a point to include Lord Leverhulme in that category. The preservation of the cultural tradition costs money, and Leverhulme had lots and used it honourably, recognising that nature and art are ‘needs of the mind’. Soap ads and drawings of ...”

“... the cliff trottoir by easy stages I’ll dawdle with a feeling of that’s that – Great talents may write poems for the ages, But poetasters with their tongues in fetters When all else fails at least can still write ...”

“... suicide at Mayerling in 1889, but had been murdered by foreign agents. Brook-Shepherd thinks she may have done this to bolster the efforts of a loony monarchist group who wanted the Pope to canonise her late husband. By this time she was in her nineties, though, and hardly to be blamed. Naturally frugal, she enjoyed imposing frugality on others. Her devoted ...”

“... like Peter’s being that a life of complete self-indulgence, if led with the whole heart, may also bring ...”

“... critics to mention Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, and call her a ‘born writer’, whatever that may mean. This one makes such praise hard to understand. It is a competent family saga of a familiar kind. Jack is the standard-model wild novelist, Sarah is determined to ‘keep her painting self intact’, and gets help from a German refugee art teacher who ...”

“... include Will Alsop, Future Systems, Rem Koolhaas and Coop Himmelb(l)au. And while architecture may be 10 per cent bedsit lucubration, it is 110 per cent a cut-throat business that demands graft, oily diplomacy, baksheesh, clubbable chumminess, anilingual shamelessness. In their day jobs Archigram’s original members worked for Taylor Woodrow, the ...”

“... and to ask that Congress pass his Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act. The Democrats may well vote against it, but that will be a painful and uneasy case to make. Trump is putting himself across as the leader who cares for all the lives worth caring for. The day after the speech, the Senate acquitted President Trump of the two charges the ...”

“... shelter’. These experiments in rewilding will remain in place until the end of October, and may return next year, weathering in harmony with the buildings they ...”