“... long Arctic expedition, and a controversial spell as Governor of Van Diemen’s Land. Then, in May 1845, Franklin set off with two ships – the Erebus and the Terror – and 129 men on the voyage that would kill him. In July, the convoy was seen by two whalers, entering Lancaster Sound. Nothing more would be heard of it for 14 years. Had the ships sunk or ...”

“... much of his later life: he fought on the White side in the Civil War. Aunt Olya’s influence may well have saved his skin when the Whites lost, but his future was secured by a deal with the Soviet secret service. By 1924, when he helped his mother and niece to get to Berlin, he was already in their pay. Beevor surmises that his tasks included recruiting ...”

“... And like him they were popular, not difficult, middlebrow not highbrow. Kipling’s short stories may initially read like puzzles: he reduced his narratives to essentials in much in the same way as Nicholson reduced detail in his woodcuts. Awkward sincerity never gets in the way of the dandy’s desire to achieve an appearance of effortlessness, to write and ...”

“... and ignoring them is as bad as caressing them. Almodóvar is more genial, and believes the myths may respond to friendly mockery, and could even be got to do a little work. At a wake in Volver a crowd of women hover round a young woman, who is disturbed by the sheer clustering energy of this traditional presence. A high-angle shot makes them look like a ...”

“... their 16th birthday”, we said, and let’s be strict about it. Perhaps you may even appreciate our discipline and tact. Let’s be strict, but let’s not be cruel. Give them a week. Let them have their birthday, their last birthday of that old life.’ In his seven previous novels, Graham Swift has committed himself to writing about ...”

“... is ambiguous: the miners might be saved. There is no parallel reprieve for Alice, but others may find that, after all, they can manage. Early in the novel, a gun is fired, half in play, half in ignorance. This introduces the notion of Russian roulette, an image that recurs in Alice’s pill-box, ‘its segments like the chambers of a gun’, in a ...”

“... mind will stay: One is that if something’s worth saying, and sounds good once it’s said, you may just as well just say it twice, it costs no more or less; good once, better twice, go ahead. And the other was something McCarthy said, he said it by way of a goodbye. – Hurry back, boy, McCarthy said. Hurry back soon for a pat and good craic. But the very ...”

“... a meaningful escapade, inspecting the hieroglyphics of your own pop-cultural generation.‘It may seem strange to anyone who is not a graphic designer,’ Rick Poynor writes in the book accompanying the show, ‘but album cover design has never been highly regarded within the design profession. General histories of the subject never show many of ...”

“... for, partly because he doesn’t know what a drug cartel, or perhaps even competing drug cartels, may do, and partly because neither he nor anyone, except perhaps the unfortunate Wells, has any idea of who or what Chigurh is. That Moss gives Chigurh such a good run for his money (or his principles) shows how tough and resourceful he is, and makes for much ...”

“... a victim, and they are not.’ ‘If my only identity is that of the victim,’ she writes, ‘I may (or so it seems) commit any atrocity.’ Instead, I suggest, if we loosen our grip on suffering, discard any claim to own it, then perhaps we can ask a different question: how much pain can anyone hold in their mind at once? Must my pain always be greater ...”

“... the book’s transnationalism and intertextuality threaten to overwhelm its actual object. This may seem the right way to study Qazwini, whose work was so tightly interwoven with his time that it was often made invisible, incorporated into other works without attribution. But as an approach it sacrifices some of the texture of Wonders and Rarities: its ...”

“... whose work – mostly new pieces made especially for the space – is currently on view (until 31 May). Vriesendorp became friends with Jencks in the late 1960s: her then husband, Rem Koolhaas, was one of his students at the Architectural Association and in 1975 Koolhaas and Vriesendorp co-founded the architectural firm OMA. Vriesendorp’s watercolour ...”

“... On​ 23 May, the day after he called a general election, Rishi Sunak said in a radio interview that his government’s flagship Rwanda deportation scheme will only go ahead if the Tories are re-elected on 4 July. This admission came as a surprise: many had assumed that part of the rationale for calling an early election was to get a campaign boost as the flights got underway ...”

“... 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 ...”