“... Kenya’s​ government is in crisis. In May, President William Ruto introduced a controversial new finance bill, which proposed higher duties on basic goods such as bread, vegetable oil and sugar, as well as an ‘eco-levy’ that would drive up the cost of sanitary towels and other items. Ruto said the taxes would raise a much needed additional £2 billion in government revenues ...”

“... in their own thoughts. Is one of them returning from a journey or are they saying goodbye? It may not matter. Vapour and smoke from a steam locomotive drift around them.Le Paris d’Agnès Varda, de-ci, de-là, at the Musée Carnavalet (until 24 August), brings together more than 130 of her photographs and contact sheets, along with notes and ...”

“... by the Lorraine poet Henry Humbert’s loss of his eyesight. But on further inspection, this clue may be misleading. Humbert’s verse sequence is a set of howls against his descent into ‘appalling night’. By contrast, La Tour’s darknesses are affirmative ushers to concentration.We know at least that their reputation spread to Paris, where Louis XIII ...”

“... of Payne Knight’s collection, not to mention the range of genres represented, suggests that it may have been assembled as a comprehensive historical survey. Payne Knight and his fellow collector Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode were among the first in Europe to bequeath their private collections of drawings to a public institution. Both were ahead of their ...”

“... genesis of all KS’s works to date and gives details of his global concert-giving activity. We may not be as aware of this in the UK now as we were twenty years ago. But he still circles the globe giving concerts almost incessantly. Oddly enough, the main centre for KS performance seems to be Milan, as each new instalment of his gigantic Opera cycle Licht ...”

“... Modern revisits that original exploration with Nigerian Modernism: Art and Independence (until 10 May). ‘Modernism’ in this context means the shift in visual art brought about by colonialism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, during which easel painting and European art history became widely disseminated, and as a reaction to colonial rule and its ...”

“... it was Anita Brookner.’ The young man, who seemed remarkably undeferential, said security may have thought it was a device. The Queen said: ‘Yes. That is exactly what it is. A book is a device to ignite the imagination.’ The footman said: ‘Yes, maam.’ It was as if he was talking to his grandmother, and not for the first time the Queen was made ...”

“... KKK is not a South African organisation and no one knew who its ‘members’ really were – they may even have been the Security Police out of uniform. Rowley received a tip-off about the first attack and had a large contingent of ANC activists hidden in the garden to ambush the Klan. Among them was the writer Tom Sharpe, who peeped out from behind a tree at ...”

“... he came to regret (his account of this episode has been deleted from the English translation). In May 1969 the Minister transferred him back to the Academy’s Institute of Physics in Moscow where his career had begun, with a modest salary to supplement his Academician’s income. Sakharov describes his scientific work from then on as minor: most of his ...”

“... than the one so devotedly acquired by Sahagun. Entranced by Brading’s parabola, the reader may be tempted to forget two important, shadowed aspects of the Spanish American story. The index to his book contains no entry for capitalism. But it was surely capitalism that played the key role in destroying the Old Order. Borbon ‘reform’ was at bottom a ...”

“... circles of Northern humanism, the creation, not to say the construct, of Erasmus. Details may be arguable. Only now and again, however, as in her account of the intellectual implications of a little collected volume at Yale which may have belonged to More’s and Erasmus’s friend Cuthbert Tunstal, does she fail to ...”

“... all ideologies, including fogeyism, must initially be synthesised by the educated, a process which may then be misrepresented as wilful ‘forging’, ‘dreaming up’ etc. However, an ideology which has convulsed the world must be more than wilful. At this deeper level it is nationalism which has invented modern intellectuals. Their prehistory lay in the ...”

“... wasn’t a diplomat, didn’t make a run for it and has indeed lived in France since 1952. He may not even have been an Apostle! He was a working-class lad from Scotland, a scholar and – guess what? – a believing Communist. Where does this leave the celebrated hothouse that created ‘the climate of treason’?Cairncross knew all about the climate of ...”

“... as ‘head of state’ and talking of ‘I, as a government’. Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson may have fulminated against her, in the course of reviewing this book, but they helped launch the good ship Thatcher and sailed in her fatly for many a year, long sustaining and defending her against those who objected from the outset to government by ...”

“... popular books now on sale, Mao Zedong and Shaoshan, is driven to a rare editorial comment: We may remember that when Mao went swimming in 1959, a sea of spectators covered the hills in a great hubbub of welcoming cries, refusing to go even when it was dusk, so that Mao could appreciate the affection of his fellow villagers. This time the hillside was ...”