“... scientist and a troupe of cosmopolitan nerds start work together on their tabula rasa, an empty white room – a ‘fantasy sandbox’. Beginning with CAD ‘crayons’ they build up, first to a virtual re-creation of Henri Rousseau’s jungle, then to Van Gogh’s room in Arles, and finally – this is their VR masterpiece – Yeats’s ...”

“... and balloons; in Thomas Beddoes, the doctor, and his Pneumatic Institute, and his wife, Anna; in Michael Faraday, the physicist; in Charles Babbage, the mathematician and inventor of the difference engine; in Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Byron; in Mary Shelley, Frankenstein’s monster’s creator; in everyone’s connections and ...”

“... Comets. We find, too, the trenchant comments of Richard Hoggart, A.H. Halsey, Anthony Sampson and Michael Young – the Four Evangelists of the 1950s to whom Hennessy dedicates his book. Their increasingly grumpy pronouncements on the ‘shiny barbarism of the new affluence’ pepper the pages of Having It So Good. Of the new milk bars, for example, Hoggart ...”

“... memoir, Mother Ireland, published in 1976. This is a marvellous mix of Bowen’s Court, The White Goddess, and one of those travel books that’s narrated entirely from the back of a cab, because the writer is suffering from a bygone illness that requires them to have a blanket over their legs. It describes O’Brien’s 1940s upbringing in County Clare ...”

“... a few times, or from the membrane surrounding an eight-week-old embryo, or it might be an adult white blood cell. The information derived from such a genetic screen may bear on a person’s future health, life-expectancy and mental stability. Science has presented us with these far-reaching new possibilities before their implications have been thought ...”

“... background as you reach for a shelf of cashmere sweaters, or see your food approaching on a big white plate. In Manchester these days, such pretend utopias are part of the landscape. Moderately prosperous people, and those who would like to be, can spend wet Saturdays as if they were in Milan or Madrid, consuming and coffee-sipping and practising their ...”

“... through the little girl; the bishop sent a questionnaire, to which William, prompted by Saint Michael who had appeared in support, gave full replies – about death, the afterlife and the structure of heaven and hell. He uses the word ‘purgatory’ – an early instance of the noun – and clarifies the condition of the bodies of the dead: they are but ...”

“... With all of the appropriate delights Top-level cricket is reserved for whites. You must be white to wear the proper cap And have a drink while you watch Boycott bat And during lunch go down and meet the chap And slap him on the back and have a chat And go back up and take a little nap And finally he’s run out and that’s that. Yes, that was ...”

“... it appears, no longer holds any interest for him. Still, before Brian Moore, whom do we have? Michael McLaverty, perhaps, with his adroit unclouded prose and unabashed simplicity: ‘At the top of the mountain they lay in the heather and gazed at Belfast spread out in the flat hollow below them, its lean mill chimneys stretched above the haze of ...”

“... the second still a schoolgirl in 1939, with her front hair rolled into a sausage shape, at their white-brick cottage in Great Sindon, Essex. Augmenting these recollections are some pieces of research work by an author engaged in examining the Hillyard case. The Sindon household to which Faith becomes attached is pretty odd, what with querulous, prickly ...”

“... part, but the real situation is little short of a creeping nationalisation of local government by White-hall – by the Treasury in particular. The Daily Express last year published a cartoon showing ‘Red Ken’ digging the grave of democracy, but the whole bizarre, impudent, exhilarating history of his administration at County Hall shows that he and his ...”

“... Williams), only two (named) amateurs have been deemed worthy of representation in the show: John White Abbott, the remarkably faithful imitator of his teacher Francis Towne, and the Reverend William Gilpin, who merits such exceptional treatment solely on account of his work as a leading theorist of the picturesque (in fact, Gilpin didn’t produce ...”

“... Two people I knew have died: Maurice Berger, an art critic, curator and civil rights activist; and Michael Sorkin, the radical architect and critic. A friend at the Whitney told me of a staff member in his late forties, a father of two, who had died of the virus.The pain of social distancing and isolation isn’t negligible, but neither is it lethal, and in ...”

“... isn’t clear that British politicians appreciated these nuances, though some officials, including Michael Oatley, the MI6 man on the ground, certainly did. The principal IRA objective was an invitingly lowish hurdle, and should have been seen as such: ‘an acknowledgment of the right of the Irish people to determine their own future without interference from ...”

“... of the son’s avant-gardism. Having gone for a prevailing, historically appropriate black-and-white, Reitz himself is avant-garde enough to fleck the film with colour as a heightening for critical moments. In the context of the film at large, however, these dabs and flecks could be thought an alien feature – caviare to the general, Stockhausen to the ...”