“... the crystal wine glasses, the Chateaubriand being carved in front of us at five hundred miles an hour felt extraordinary, a swank unreality that matched my elevated mood. I was 32. I was going to Hollywood. I was making a movie. I was going to be a screenwriter.I thought about Dad up there among the clouds and hoped he was looking down. He could ...”

“... my position: I was raised on trashy books. I grew up in rural Kansas; the nearest library was 20 miles away, and, especially in the summer, the only books around were my stepmother’s and the ones my older sister had procured through school catalogues. At my high school, Daphne du Maurier was on the English department reading list, along with ...”

“... reduced me to sudden tears.) I began absorbing ever more specialised fare: Macdonald’s books, Taylor and Tuchman on the political background, battle histories of Gallipoli, Verdun and Passchendaele, books about Haig and Kitchener, VAD nurses, brave dead subalterns and monocled mutineers. I read Michael Hurd’s desolating biography – The Ordeal of Ivor ...”

“... working class, but also the celebratory humour of fanzines and the culture of acid house. The 1990 Taylor Report mandated all-seater stadiums for the top two divisions. All of this, Wilson argues, ‘suited the newer, more gentrified audience drawn by Italia 90 with its opera, classical backdrop and emotion’; the FA’s 1991 Blueprint for the Future of ...”

“... at night around public lavatories, and further out, at Wimbledon Common (‘exactly five miles from the bright lights of Piccadilly’), where in 1963 a reporter from the News of the World, high on disgust, observes ‘that misguided collection of misfits known as The Queers’ assembling after dusk (they sound like a band from a couple of decades ...”

“... Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor. Their music embodied the promise of another country, one that was true to its professed ideals. Its very existence seemed miraculous. A vernacular music, created by the descendants ...”

“... on the dominance of the big seven private housebuilding companies – in descending order of size, Taylor Wimpey, Barratt Homes, Persimmon, Bellway, Redrow, Bovis and Crest Nicholson – who between them have almost 40 per cent of the market in new homes. But the most striking thing in the document is a chart displaying the history of Britain, in housebuilding ...”

“... that time. Here were produced of ministers, Mr Timothy Cruso, Mr Hannot of Yarmouth, Mr Nathaniel Taylor, Mr Owen and several others; and of another kind, poets Sam. Wesley, Daniel De Foe, and two or three of your Western martyrs that, had they liv’d, would have been extraordinary men of that kind, viz. Kitt. Battersby, young Jenkins, Hewlin, and many ...”

“... of public toilets. So many bus routes have been cancelled that buses now cover 14 per cent fewer miles than in 2010. Councils face an estimated £14 billion backlog in road maintenance, with up to 50 per cent of roads judged to be at risk of complete deterioration within fifteen years. In 2023, the RAC reported that the number of callouts for pothole-related ...”

“... walking tour of northern England, Scotland and Ireland. They had walked more than six hundred miles when a letter arrived reporting that Tom’s illness had worsened. Sick now himself with a sore throat that would not resolve, Keats took a packet boat home from Inverness. All that autumn he watched his brother shiver as if in a palsy, spectre-thin and ...”

“... net worth of $59 billion has been accrued from refineries, petrochemical plants, and thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines, to the detriment of clean air and water and the ability of the federal government to regulate and limit greenhouse gases. My daughter-in-law, mother of a 16-month-old child, directed my attention to research on the ‘body ...”

“... The RebellionVII: The FactsFilm AudioI: The FireIt was​ a clear day and you could see for miles. From her flat on the 23rd floor, Rania texted one of her best friends from back home and they talked about facts. Who you love is a fact and the meals you cook are facts. When the sun shines it is a fact of God and England is a fact of life. Rania always ...”