“... in Swarming and the Future of Conflict (2000) by the RAND Corporation’s John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt. Technology, Arquilla and Ronfeldt argue, will soon make it possible for small clusters of loosely organised military units to conduct brief and co-ordinated strikes, then disperse. Message boards, similarly, allow lone hackers to share targets and ...”

“... Protestant and notoriously sectarian part-time constabulary. His father, uncles and aunt (who died young, having never fully recovered from injuries she sustained when a car crashed though a checkpoint she was operating) were part-time members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, the local wing of the British army which replaced the B Specials. This allowed the IRA ...”

“... subscribing to le dernier cri from Europe’. Rothko dominates an essay in the Hopper catalogue by David Anfam, the author of the Rothko catalogue raisonné, who notes that ‘so much has been written about Edward Hopper that perhaps one of the few remaining royal roads by which to approach him is via another massively interpreted artist.’ Anfam makes the ...”

“... her full gear – knowing that in a hundred years’ time she’d look extraordinary.’ Ono was a young child when Tokyo was firebombed by American forces in 1945; she knows all too well what a demolished city looks like. She goes on: ‘This, in practice, would mean that as a filmmaker you don’t really have to make a film any more but just put your name ...”

“... of response.’ There are complaints about critics, and the neglect of genius. Picasso, who is a young woman artist, reminds herself that ‘talent and application could pitch her in the Royal Academy, genius was certain to bar her from it.’ Sappho is the sternest lecturer. Winterson uses her to meditate on language, in swoony paragraphs. She promises us ...”

“... Milner, a great proconsul with the flair of the dangerous don for gathering around him a group of young men and converting them into disciples. Amery was the young intellectual with a First in Greats and a Fellowship at All Souls. Milner was the idol of the hour and the prophet and theorist of a new British Empire. The ...”

“... at their burrow doors on the turf above. I went out to the May this year to show the seabirds to a young friend, a student of Arctic biology. Anna was studying in Tromsø and had been on a research ship right up to the ice. She had witnessed polar bears hunting ringed seals, but she had never seen anything like the May. That was then.Highly pathogenic avian ...”

“... to produce the authorised biography Big Bill is waiting for. So he gets in touch with a shady young ‘researcher’, the lemur of the title. The lemur, who seems to know a good deal about the Mulholland family already, gets to work. A week later he phones Glass to tell him he’s discovered something big, big enough that Glass will surely be willing to ...”

“... suggest that she is depicting herself playing the part of a gypsy musician, the kind of alluring young girl at her instrument favoured by contemporary Dutch painters. We can’t be sure if Artemisia was the ‘Sig.ra Artimisia’ who is recorded as having sung and danced in gypsy costume for a performance at the Medici court in 1615. But the possibility ...”

“... been delighted to show. The painting would seem a very grand but not unusual portrait of two smart young men of learned and artistic inclinations, were it not for three surprising items. At the front, looking like a guided missile about to hit the floor from somewhere off-right, is a grinning skull in very elongated perspective (‘anamorphic’ is the ...”

“... appointed governor of Virginia by Charles II. In the other column Francis laments the loss of his young wife, ‘dilectissima Philadelphia … Charissima, Desideratissima Conjunx’. The other cartouche monument lists the many virtues of ‘that Truly noble and Religious Lady Mary Howard’, wife of the 6th baron, which included ‘Charity to the ...”

“... a fierce, authoritative denunciation of his audience: ‘Thou art the man!’ (II Samuel xii 7). Young Michael was brought up vaguely C of E (like both his parents) and did not feel that the potent Hebraic name of Nathan really belonged to him. He seems to feel that ‘race’ should be a subject for amusing fantasy, not to be taken seriously. Just at the ...”

“... and sleep in dormitories. Those who make it through the annual assessments compete at sixteen with young dancers around the world to attend the Upper School in Covent Garden. On graduation three years later they audition for classical dance companies from around the world: almost all say that their dream is to be accepted by the Royal Ballet.White Lodge alumni ...”

“... a year in Berlin, who had finally had his first collection of poems accepted by Faber. He was a young man beginning to make his mark on the world; he was discovering his voice, and his role. He had decided to become a teacher. Auden taught full-time for five years, from 1930 to 1935, at Larchfield Academy in Helensburgh, not far from Glasgow, and at the ...”

“... a hexateuch), was the visual sumptuousness: the arrival in Bucharest of the train carrying the young British Council teacher and his new wife; the Athens settings of the wife’s romance with one British officer and her scrambles up the pyramids with another; the North African desert; Alexandria, Luxor, Damascus. The series, combined with some well-timed ...”