“... no archives from me period to compare with those of three centuries later so cunningly used by Jonathan Spence to construct his Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi. If we had to judge Khubilai on the basis of his appearance in later Chinese historical writings we might never be tempted to read a full biography of him at all. Many of them cheat ...”

“... features an aggressively encrusted pale rectangle with a second rectangle – black, white and brown – in its top left corner. Dated 1953, fairly early for such deliberately coarse abstraction, the painting landed in the collection of the famously plain-spoken art critic Clement Greenberg. Greenberg never published on the relatively obscure Donati, so ...”

“... the official opposition, the Compendium mob; favourite copy for rudeboy journalists. Jonathan Meades (‘Robin behaved badly before anyone else did’), Ian Penman, John Williams, Elizabeth Young – they’ve all done him. And been stretchered back to the cab. A Cook tribute is the contemporary equivalent to the apprentice’s passing-out ...”

“... people who can pay huge sums can’t find anything to rent, because the competition is so fierce. Jonathan Klein, a travel-agency owner in his sixties living with Aids, jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge last year after being driven out of his home, with his business in the Castro facing eviction. ‘EVICTION = DEATH’, a sign at the memorial said, echoing ...”

“... one of its greatest chief justices, Bora Laskin.) The first beneficiary of this dispensation, Jonathan Sumption QC, a noted historian as well as a leading lawyer, was sworn in in January. Last November, after he had been appointed but before he had taken office, Sumption delivered one of the law’s more prestigious annual lectures to a packed audience in ...”

“... Samson and Delilah, and wore a spangly bikini top, the better to cling on to the shoe-polish-brown chest of Victor Mature as Samson, in full, glorious Technicolor. Even with her clothes buttoned up, however, Hedy Lamarr carried the frisson of having once been prepared to strip naked on film. Even though few in America had seen Ecstasy, it continued to ...”

“... proposition as it is an old satirical move, going back at least as far as The Beggar’s Opera and Jonathan Wild. The satirist affects not to see the difference between criminals and respectable people, and we are supposed to wonder if the difference is as secure as we thought. The same move, although less satirical and more romantic in mood, structures most ...”

“... To Cambridge, where I talk to students about my medical history. It’s part of a course run by Jonathan Silverman, director of communications at Addenbrooke’s and himself a Cambridgeshire GP. As so often when I’ve spoken in schools I find I’m of more interest to the staff than I am to the students, and I don’t do it very well, haltingly recounting ...”

“... It was not a mistake. ‘We knew what we were hitting. It was well-planned,’ said Admiral Jonathan Howe, the American officer in charge of the UN operation. One of Howe’s legal advisers immediately questioned whether the attack had breached the Geneva Conventions. Almost certainly, it had. Unlike the Belgians and Canadians, the US has held no public ...”

“... plan – ‘We were the envy of the world,’ according to one Downing Street adviser quoted by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott in their excoriating Failures of State. Unfortunately, the reality was that the NHS had a chronic shortage of the necessary equipment and a plan that was reliant on exactly the kind of ‘just in time’ supply methods most ...”

“... by Naomi Klein’s blurb – ‘inspiring’ – and a frisson added by the book’s appearance: a brown paper wrapping like those used to discourage porn thieves and customs inspectors. Trembling fingers that go further are reminded that this book succeeds Empire (2000), by the same authors, which provided a picture of the global imperium supposed to have ...”

“... that she and her handlers have been fashioning since the debacle of the 2008 primaries, or so Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes argue in HRC, their inside-dopester account of Clinton’s ‘rebirth’. Allen and Parnes serve as a chorus, commenting portentously on the events described in Hard Choices. Together the two books constitute a vast vanilla pudding ...”

“... War nostalgia. Item: the Weekend Guardian’s spring fashion issue, with Alexa Chung, the nut-brown-haired television presenter, posed to look like a figure from 1940s propaganda posters – Women of Britain, Go to the Shops. Item: those creepy Home Office billboards – ‘You Have The Right NOT To Remain Silent’ – copied from that ubiquitous ‘Keep ...”

“... that all interpretation is necessarily misinterpretation (reduced by calmer exponents such as Jonathan Culler to the uncontentious assertion that no interpretation can ever be final), and the dashing new formulation of the old problem of intention – Ellis argues with force and clarity. Moreover he happens to believe that some writings are more complex ...”

“... successful moments, walks straight into two of the tales. Above all, he is not just read, as Laura Brown read Woolf in The Hours, making but not quite making Woolf’s tragic story her own. Or named, as Clarissa is named for Mrs Dalloway, making her party for the Aids-stricken Richard a reprise. In fact, in Specimen Days, Whitman is not read at all. He is ...”