“... 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 ...”

“... There’s a pronunciation guide at the beginning of the book so wonderfully patronising it may in fact be mocking the problems non-Africans have with names they consider exotic. If you’re called Taiye Selasi there must be many countries in which you are constantly required to spell and explain your name, which is bound to feel like defending your ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... all this, she decides, is an invitation to go on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! Others may weigh up the value of the £250,000 fee against the bottomless humiliation of being on the programme. Jones never mentions the problem of the programme’s format or the way participants are degraded and mortified: she only sees a quick way out of ...”

“... course, and speed limits were quickly reintroduced, just as the Germans were abolishing them. In May 1939, the Nazi regime finally admitted defeat, and reimposed speed restrictions on all roads except motorways, which continue to be without them and are the most terrifying roads in Europe. Cars, Hitler proclaimed, had to lose their ‘class-based and, as a ...”

“... off with a set of ‘queries’ that might form suitable topics for polite conversation. ‘May not the harmony and discord of Colours arise from the proportions of the vibrations propagated through the fibres of the optick Nerves,’ he asked winningly, ‘as the harmony and discord of sounds arise from the proportions of the vibrations of the ...”

“... and nasty as his fish – Scraps out of every dish Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub, May keep up the Play-club: There, sweepings do as well As the best-ordered meal.By the time Jonson wrote these lines, Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre – or, as almost everyone now agrees, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, co-written by Shakespeare and the ...”

“... against criticism – Proteus shape-shifted in order not to answer questions, after all. There may be another, unintended consequence: if iconic works like Les Demoiselles d’Avignon are almost always on view, the flux elsewhere might render them more monumental, not less. Then there is this unkind thought: uncertainty and disruption are capitalist values ...”

“... Cecil, a rising royal secretary, is protective towards Elizabeth, mindful of the role history may have in store for her. Shardlake is retained as one of her lawyers. Now 47, he is lonely, world-weary, and bored of drawing up conveyances and wills (perhaps as Sansom was before he packed in the law). He clings fondly to the idea of the commonwealth, defined ...”

“... By ‘shorts’ she’s probably not thinking of him dressed as a Hitler Youth but Kempowski may have been, if only as a naughty joke. Grass didn’t own up to his Nazi past until 2006 and even his biographer claimed to know nothing about it. Kempowski can’t have known about it till then either but in the interview he gave shortly before his ...”

“... and confessions piled on top of one another in marketplaces and town halls. This pluralism may be more important for the fact that no one thought it was an issue. Much of modern European history turns on the ‘discovery’ of that pluralism (in its political, legal and demographic forms) as a problem, and varied attempts to solve it. The diagnosis and ...”

“... rigorously at work in the later films as in the early ones. Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible may belong unequivocally to the Socialist Realist epic-heroic mode. But, Arsenjuk argues, they transform that mode from within by frequent recourse to the theatrical-grotesque, thus ‘putting into crisis’ its ‘ideological function’. The climax of Alexander ...”

“... Lover’s Prayer’, ‘I’ve Been Loving You Too Long’ and ‘Pain in My Heart’ may have been his bread and butter, but Redding was also proud, headstrong and, by most accounts, happy. He seems to have taken great pleasure in the things fame brought him. By the time he turned 24 he had his own publishing company, his own production company ...”

“... The Literary Brat Pack was a journalistic readymade, roping together a number of writers who may have scarcely known each other and treating them as a floating soirée. It was cartoonish and unfair to most of the individuals involved, but the thing about catchphrases is that once they click, they stick. And for a brief spell, Jay and Bret obliged the ...”

“... 91 per cent had at least one pre-existing condition; on average they had 2.7. The numbers may change, but at that point the background risk of mortality for patients in their seventies with this number of pre-existing conditions was greater than the risk associated with Covid-19: the latter is estimated by the Imperial team as 5.1 per cent, while the ...”