“... family-owned business empires in Asia. You wouldn’t know this from the sober demeanour of John Riady, Mochtar’s grandson. Still in his twenties, he was prepared for membership of the global business elite at Georgetown, Wharton and Columbia, but returned to teach law at his family’s university in Lippo Village. I met him in his office, which was ...”

“... that Roosevelt had had a change of heart. French expatriates in Washington, notably the poet Saint-John Perse, talked down De Gaulle; Washington’s envoy to Vichy, Robert Murphy, briefed hard against him; but perhaps the president drew his own conclusions from the disastrous Anglo-French assault on Dakar in the autumn of 1940, undertaken at De Gaulle’s ...”

“... Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (as paraphrased by Brian Stone): ‘Only Newton’s laws of motion may enjoy a wider scientific consensus than a human-enhanced greenhouse effect.’ There isn’t consensus, however, either scientific or political, about the best ways to respond to the problem; in part because so many possible avenues of research ...”

“... system resulting in billings to the government that are not prepared in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and contract terms. We have also found system deficiencies resulting in material invoicing misstatements that are not prevented, detected and/or corrected in a timely manner. They also found that ‘KBR also does not monitor the ongoing ...”

“... We are living through a great era of saint-making. Under John Paul II an industrial revolution has overtaken the Vatican, an age of mass production. Saints are fast-tracked to the top, and there are beatifications by the bucket-load. It seems a shame to have all the virtues required for beatification, but not to get your full name in the Catholic Almanac Online ...”

“... herself; the trouble was that Peters did too.In the autumn of 1973, Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, had approached Warner Bros offering to write a new version of A Star Is Born. The original film from 1937 and its 1954 remake with Judy Garland had been set in Hollywood, but Didion and Dunne wanted to explore the music industry. Several ...”

“... realist? His engagement with the Communist Party – he had been a leader of the Chicago John Reed Club, the CPUSA writers’ group, and published journalism in The New Masses – contributed, but Wright’s relationship with the party had always been stormy, particularly when it came to aesthetics. His 1937 manifesto, ‘Blueprint for Negro ...”

“... 2005 papal conclave, when he was the main contender against Joseph Ratzinger after the death of John Paul II. It centred on the arrest and torture of two Jesuit priests, Oswaldo Yorio and Franz Jalics. Bergoglio had known both of them since the early 1960s – they had been his teachers. By the time Bergoglio took over as provincial of Argentina and ...”

“... Wilde himself was standing trial. How somebody as worldly and bright as Wilde, so alert to the laws of the ruling class and at the receiving end of so much advice and so vulnerable to blackmail and so broke, could have been led so easily towards his downfall remains a mystery. But there are crucial aspects of his make-up and background, especially in the ...”

“... Proms. Think Morning Service at the village church, carols from King’s College Cambridge, Elton John singing to the nation from Westminster Abbey. Think popular music in general and, when Plato brings in a parallel from the visual arts, forget the Tate Gallery and recall the advertisements that surround us everywhere. Above all, think about the way all this ...”

“... this local diorama of frivolity and falsehood, however, lie ostensible truths of universal scope: laws of the heart and mind operative everywhere, abstract and absolute, secrets brought at last to light by art, unmediated access to which readers anywhere on earth can gain. Proust was not, of course, the first novelist to issue such existential edicts, even if ...”

“... he taught obedience. Muhammad, on the other hand, was a human prophet who created a new set of laws and inspired a warrior following to unify a hitherto formless Arabian Peninsula. Not belief in a Son of God, but in a text left by a man who founded a state, defined the faithful. If the Quran fell into two parts, verses from Mecca not that different from ...”

“... were awaited with interest. Since it opened to the public in 1985, the Saatchi collection in St John’s Wood has become a focus of what’s called the contemporary art debate. With every purchase, names are made and names are called. But Saatchi’s taste, his collecting policy, is eclectic and elusive. So much art, of so many kinds, has passed into and ...”

“... like Mungo being able to overcome his negative programming if he waits another half-decade? The laws that masquerade as his protectors would rather see him mangled than whole.The Glasgow of Young Mungo is untouched by the 1980s Glasgow’s Miles Better campaign. It isn’t the Glasgow of the School of Art, of the Burrell Collection or Kelvingrove ...”

“... us, the unimaginable extension of the universe, or universes, the impersonality of the statistical laws to which our personal behaviour conforms, oblivion. On the edge of infinite nothingness we go about our trivial business: book holidays, see to the new tax disc for the car, shop for the weekend at Sainsbury’s. This is ...”