“... April 1963 until I left school and Doris’s house two weeks before taking my A-levels sometime in May 1966. That is, a period you might think of as the early 1960s, although the 1960s didn’t really announce themselves to us until 1967 (‘Good heavens, so this is the 1960s we will hear so much about’). And then rapidly, almost concurrently, the 1960s ...”

“... led to serious discussions within the Concertación, raising the hope that hundreds of cases may one day be reopened. What might the tilt towards female empowerment mean? Does it arise from a belief that men are incorrigible watchers of one another’s backs? A desire for human, as well as macroeconomic, progress? It doesn’t seem to reflect a second ...”

“... publication, already feel like artefacts of a moribund social liberalism. Reparations for slavery may have seemed ‘the indispensable tool against white supremacy’ when Obama was in power. It is hard to see how this tool can be deployed against Trump. The documentation in Coates’s essays is consistently impressive, especially in his writing about mass ...”

“... with the proprietor and chat with other customers, or run into a friend or neighbour. That may happen in big chains such as Starbucks – but the employees aren’t likely to be around for long, the profit doesn’t go back into the community and the design of the place is generic, not reflecting its environment.The San Francisco of my youth was full ...”

“... cruelty, insanity and crime; from their lopsided faces, sloping brows and misshapen features may be recognised the unmistakable criminal type.’But this sort of rhetoric had to be put into cold storage after the dénouement of the Palmer raids. Hoover now spoke the language of liberal reform; asked, on becoming FBI Director in 1924, for the Bureau to be ...”

“... taking this one seriously. The book’s title has an archaic resonance, but also suggests we may be in for an elevated form of spiritual self-help. The main discussion is highly selective in a highly predictable way, focusing on ten or eleven poets from a 200-year historical span, all of them dead white men and long-canonised monsters of fame (Wordsworth ...”

“... solitary or out of synch with everyone else, I held onto this private aloofness very fiercely. I may have envied friends whose language was one or the other, or who had lived in the same place all their lives, or who had done well in accepted ways, or who truly belonged, but I do not recall ever thinking that any of that was possible for me. It wasn’t that ...”

“... of Biscay, through the Channel and into the North Sea. It was bound for Hull. By lunchtime on 6 May, more than a month after setting out from Vietnam, it was steaming up the Humber.I wanted to confirm what was on board, so I looked on the internet and found a pub, the Humber Tavern, in the village of Paull, that seemed to have a good view of the water. I ...”

“... along one social or cultural dimension can produce a given assessment, comparison along others may generate different judgments. None yields an all-purpose standard. The Baltic republics had enjoyed a number of past advantages under tsarism which in different ways had persisted after their reincorporation in the Soviet Union. Protestant and Catholic ...”

“... reasons advanced for Turkish membership in Western capitals. The fall of the Soviet Union may have removed the menace of Communism, but there is now – it is widely believed – a successor danger in Islamism. Rampant in the authoritarian societies of the Middle East, it threatens to stretch into immigrant communities within Western Europe ...”

“... place. As Art himself might say, my joint is getting big just thinking about it. I realise there may be a few lost souls who’ve never heard of him. Forget the overrated (and vapid-looking) Chet Baker. Art Pepper (1925-82) was an authentic American genius. One of the supreme alto saxophone players of all time – Charlie Parker included. A deliriously ...”

“... County Council were split four for Labour, three Tory, one Lib Dem. After the local elections in May, it was seven Reform, one Conservative (overall, the Tories have the most seats and run a minority administration). Deirdre Campbell was one of those who lost to Reform, beaten by Barry Elliott, a ‘striking individual’, as Vladimir Putin called Donald ...”

“... cultural barbarity of German Fascism with an extensive, decisive and clearly visible gesture. In May 1933, when ‘un-German’ books were being burned, Heinrich Mann’s were on the bonfire. Thomas Mann’s were not. He was still being protected by Bertram, among others. But his main protection was his own silence. In September the first issue of Die ...”

“... in the treaty port of Tianjin, unsuccessful study in Japan, then political baptism in the May Fourth protests of 1919 led to four years spent in Europe. He was admitted to the University of Edinburgh but declined to take up his place, and on moving to London quickly decided that Paris was preferable as a base. In France he became a communist and began ...”

“... in her last years. Far more grievous was the fall from grace of her only son. Arnold (the name may not have been propitious) was the hope of the family: a gifted, athletic boy, he was to be the shining vindication of all she had worked for. Nothing went right. He failed to gain a fellowship at Oxford, he couldn’t win the heart of the woman he loved, he ...”