“... times its deal-table plainness and verve, no matter how recondite his preoccupations. Like Wallace Stevens, Jones believed that the greatest poverty is not to live in a physical world. He had briefly thought of becoming a monk after the war, before embracing a native this-worldiness which counterpointed the long views of his spirituality, just as it enlivened ...”

“... It is as though heat had been applied to the language (calefaction?), and made – in Mark Rudman’s phrase – ‘fused images’. Lines from Lowell’s Leopardi suggest themselves by way of confirmation: ‘I could forget/the fascinating studies in my bolted room,/where my life was burning out,/and the heat/of my writings made the letters ...”

“... an unusual distinction in Belfast, and when I recall him from 1974 I remember his interest in Cat Stevens and T Rex, in pacifism and lilac T-shirts. I asked to see him. Only if I signed a confession. No. The questioning went on. They told me my mother was waiting outside the barracks – had been waiting since the moment of our arrest. If I signed, she could ...”

“... Saul Alinksy, the Chicago-based community activist and author of Rules for Radicals (1971), Mark and Paul Engler (This Is an Uprising, 2016) and Srdja Popovic, the Serbian advocate of ‘laughtivism’ (Blueprint for Revolution, 2015): XR insists that its interventions should both be fun and poke fun. Gene Sharp, the author of The Politics of ...”

“... successors as health secretary, was paid £60,000. The revolving door has become a blur. Simon Stevens, Blair’s special adviser on health, is now an executive vice president at UnitedHealth, one of America’s largest private health companies. Mark Britnell, a career NHS manager who rose to become one of the most ...”