“... Rafah crossing. (A commentator in Haaretz warns that Israel, now relishing Morsi’s overthrow, may come to miss him.) He couldn’t abide criticism, and appeared to have no more scruples than Mubarak about torture or attacks on the press. Worst of all, he did nothing to improve an economy in free-fall or to reform the security services, while styling ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... was. Lots of things are different here, I’ve learned since I arrived from New York last May. You don’t tip as much, and I often bump my head getting on the tube. In London, I’m told, fact-checking’s not much done: the facts are the burden of the reporter. But at the LRB we do check facts, which are for the most part conveniently located in the ...”

“... to Granada, where he hoped to resettle permanently; and to Portici in southern Italy, where he may have caught the malaria that would later kill him. In hotter climates he experimented with paintings in bolder blues and earth tones. The best of these, Beach at Portici, remains at the Meadows Museum in Dallas, but Street in Granatello and Seascape at ...”

“... all seething in the plasma, like underwater creatures, like the weird subterranean species that may be shapes in the water for the aghast Thai boys as they are drawn through caves measureless to man, inhaling and imagining they are breathing and staying alive. We were dead ...”

“... into ‘a hub for global events and not just football’. The Rolling Stones will play there in May in their first appearance in Britain for five years. If the club’s results had been better over the past 18 months some of the discontent would probably have remained buried. Most West Ham supporters had reconciled themselves to moving to Stratford (largely ...”

“... no consequence, Like a wave washing up on a beach, But which feels like or prompts the thought It may be the beginning of a stroke, But probably it is just the irregular heartbeat Of atrial fibrillation (AFib) Or starting up a reluctant motorcycle. The word throb makes it sound As if it had to do with sex. The word motorcycle means it does. Jeff Nash is ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... September,* I still feel that I have entered a room where I should not stay too long, where there may be things I would rather not – or even in some sense should not – see. The feeling that you have been led to transgress, that you are being drawn into scenes which are none of your business, is one source of the power of these pictures, for it goes along ...”

“... Middle Temple seems to be to have the names printed on a sheet of milky-green glass. Sign-writing may in the end become an amateur craft, one which distinguishes the independent sandwich bar from Starbucks.The ability to print type, photographs or drawings on plastic and stick the result over a whole building, a bus or a taxi has eroded the distinction ...”

“... hacksaw were found in his flat. He was duly convicted of three murders and according to the police may have been responsible for more. Scotland Yard was not, however, to be diverted from its belief that Adam’s murder had a West African connection. The child had been circumcised – as many boys in Africa are. Even more decisive was DNA evidence which showed ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... shifting steadily towards a five-party system (six in Scotland and Wales). The local elections in May 2025 made clear the threat posed by Reform to the two main parties, which translated into a national polling lead it has not given up since. The election in September of Zack Polanski as leader of the Green Party, on a bold left-populist platform, was a ...”

“... dressed to impress in shades of Tiffany turquoise with fabulous hair and an engagement ring that may have been on its way.The risk with this sort of work is that it can start to feel formulaic, and perhaps this is why Sherald has begun to expand her range of poses and settings. In A Midsummer Afternoon Dream (2020), a woman leans against the handlebars of ...”