“... a doctrinaire idea, and a whole innocent Russian town to practise on. But in the outcome there is no divergence between idea and reality: in most cases theory and practice have fused, which is what makes the novel so frightening. The exception is the superannuated old liberal, Stepan Trofimovich, an idealist in his writings and something more abject in his ...”

“... in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US ...”

“... which I could not rouse myself from all that day. When I began to write, it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine won’t read it. Katherine’s my rival no longer.While Mansfield was alive, Woolf had found her ‘cheap and hard’, ‘unpleasant’ and ‘utterly unscrupulous’. It bothered her that she ...”

“... 1. enfant’ – ‘widower, one child’). He is classified ‘B’, meaning ‘no reason not to murder immediately’. Two weeks later, on 15 May 1944, he was one of 878 able-bodied men on Convoy 73, the only one of 79 convoys with no women or children, and the only one not headed for Auschwitz. It went ...”

“... Hu and Jiang, who worked with powerful premiers (Wen Jiabao and Zhu Rongji respectively), Xi has no clear deputy, no predecessor looking over his shoulder and no obvious rivals. He is, in the historian Geremie Barmé’s phrase, ‘chairman of everything’. Though relieved of political ...”

“... down through the South-West and the South, back to New York and New England. The Bowery dance hall, Niagara Falls and Grand Canyon as tourist attractions, the segregated South, the college campus – these are the springboards for her efforts to comprehend the deep structure of the American world. A left-wing Tocqueville, she is struck by the paradox of ...”

“... beneath the dense sky of moratorium agreements: the best we can hope for Europe ... But there is no escape route in sight. You feel you are standing at bay. Australia is not a way out.Christa Wolf, CassandraThe city of Sydney has one decent road to the airport because of the Queen’s visit in 1963; the royal nostrils were not to be assaulted by the stink ...”

“... F or a time, early last year, there was no trace of Robespierre to be found on the street where he lived in the days of his fame. The restaurant called Le Robespierre had closed its doors, and after a while its portrait sign was removed from above the entrance of the house on the rue Saint-Honoré. Once again, the plaque on the wall had been smashed ...”

“... he has got lost on his way home and said strange things like he could feel his brain burning. ‘No, I’m not going,’ I say, when he returns from the hospital with antibiotics, having just drunk something called a ‘GI cocktail’. But he tells me I have to, in the strongest possible terms. He says: ‘I will be upset if you don’t.’‘Maybe the pope ...”

“... and the experience of living with Kind (who was ‘anything but’) taught Streisand independence. No one was going to tell her what to do; her family called her ‘fabrent, which means “on fire” in Yiddish’. She liked sitting under the table and listening to the adults’ conversations. She developed an unexplainable clicking in her ear and refused to ...”

“... of perpetual transience?’ Kraus asks. ‘To remain in one place is either privation or luxury. No one I know who’s died in my lifetime … has been interred in a grave.’Born in 1947 in New York City, Kathy Acker lived and worked as an adult in lots of places, most significantly downtown Manhattan, San Diego, London and San Francisco, with long spells ...”

“... DJ who’s hep to the vital Swing rhythm the kids all dig, and the stuffy station owner who wants no part of her indecorous jive. Miller, as the wide awake DJ, specialises in the wake-up call requests of local servicemen, and the film was a big hit with US military personnel stationed overseas during the Second World War: ‘Gooood ...”

“... a way that fits her restless temperament. When Mungo makes friends with a Catholic boy, she raises no religious objection, even saying that she ‘winched’ his father (kissed or dated). For a Protestant to drink Buckfast Tonic Wine might seem a marginally ecumenical act, since it was originally made by Benedictine monks in Devon. Not drinking with the ...”

“... inquests and complaints about police conduct were to be abandoned or wound up within a few months; no new civil claims for compensation would be allowed. On 1 May this year, outstanding cases were handed over to a new investigative body, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR). Its team of investigators, who have police ...”

“... he took part after 1876: finding and renting the venues, rallying and organising the painters (no easy task), paying for the publicity, sending out the invitations, loaning pictures, doing the hanging and making purchases when, as usual, the public did not oblige. He even fell out with Degas over the design of an exhibition poster. In 1882, the critic ...”