“... from this period. Both he and Larkin would of course have been outraged by this comparison, which may or may not be a sign that it is accurate.What he has in the earlier writing, though – and especially in Trawl – is a deliberately unsettling fictional rhythm. This is often actually painful (in a good way, or at least ...”

“... and ‘Her First Ball’ and in ‘The Voyage’ and ‘The Doll’s House’: stories set in what may seem to be an anywhere, but for her belonged in the city she left when she was a girl, her birthplace with its dark hills and narrow streets, its wind and harbour, its glittering little sea. Here’s her family, the house she grew up in, the summer holidays ...”

“... while retaining its prerogatives, a campaigning voice like Scahill’s is indispensable. In late May, Obama made a speech that attempted to reframe US killing policies. Al-Awlaki’s citizenship, he said, ‘should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a Swat team’. The analogy suggests that ...”

“... leader’, sending him to entertain the children of visitors at one of the city hospitals. ‘That may have been the birth of the silent piece,’ Cage said in an interview in 1982: he wasn’t allowed to make any noise for fear of disturbing the patients, so invented counting games that involved moving rhythmically round the space, in silence. In San ...”

“... Woodrow Wyatt later gloated that he had fixed this as go-between from Murdoch to Thatcher, and he may have been right. As soon as he had the papers, Murdoch began rearranging their editors, with Evans shunted from Sunday to daily, a mistake in itself, and telling them what to do, and what to write. At the time Evans pretended that Murdoch didn’t dictate ...”

“... TV stations, Islamist websites, charities and foreign militant groups, to whom some southerners may have looked for guidance. Yet, as McCargo notes, the conflict has been largely ignored by the Western press, and the Thai government, eager to keep on attracting tourists, has played it down.The crisis soon escalated, with each move by the militants provoking ...”

“... must also come to terms with him as a political thinker. His critique of corporate capitalism may not be theoretically sophisticated, but it is coherent and powerful – and very American. Indeed, his provincial Americanism may be both a strength and a weakness: he has never been able to bring foreign policy into ...”

“... out on – is the principal theme of the next two instalments, Falling towards England (1985) and May Week Was in June (1990). Written as his TV fame reached its peak, these books – scrappier than the first, and more ingratiatingly flip – get less enjoyable as qualities he’s prouder of start falling into place. Part of the problem with instalments two ...”

“... recent walloping of Cameroon and Holland’s thumping of Ghana in pre-tournament friendlies may have injected a dose of realism, but the media will continue to encourage all manner of fantastical expectations.11 June. The death last night of Nelson Mandela’s 13-year-old great-grand-daughter, Zenani, has cast a considerable pall. She was on her way ...”

“... as one might expect. In 1853 he explained it to – of all people – his lover Louise Colet: It may be a perverted taste, but I love prostitution, and for itself, too, quite apart from its carnal aspects. My heart begins to pound every time I see one of those women in low-cut dresses walking under the lamplight in the rain, just as monks in their corded ...”

“... of madness’ could have labelled him permanently as a misogynist (Beard’s response may have made him less of one). And there are an endless number of people you’ve never heard of who once got into debt or committed a minor felony that is recorded on a webpage indexed by Google and so is the first thing you would see if you searched their ...”

“... according to Montessori principles: play-based learning, led by pupils. An Ofsted inspection in May 2013 found every aspect of the school’s performance, except the behaviour and safety of the children, to be inadequate. ‘Too many pupils,’ it warned, ‘are in danger of leaving the school without being able to read and write properly.’ After another ...”

“... George VI​ was crowned on 12 May 1937, a hundred years, less six weeks, after his great-grandmother Victoria succeeded to the throne. At 18 the new queen had been full of confidence. Her first action was to move her bed out of her mother’s room and have Sir John Conroy, her mother’s intimate adviser, banished from court ...”

“... committees in a mix of civilian clothes and military gear. The countryside has armed itself. In May I visited the mountain town of Sheikh Badr in Tartus province. Forty-three townsmen in the security forces had been killed; seven others had been captured or were missing. While I was in the mayor’s office he received news that a wounded soldier had just ...”

“... published in the US in June. James Wood reviewed it at length in the New Yorker. Heti, he said, ‘may well have identified a central dialectic of 21st-century postmodern being’, but he also complained that her ‘prose is what one might charitably call basic’. The radical feminist artist Chris Kraus compared the book to Mary McCarthy’s The Company She ...”