“... a sizeable proportion of the detailed evidence we have about him dates from May and June 1593. For David Riggs, coming to the subject of Marlowe after writing Ben Jonson: A Life (1989), the paucity of material must have been fairly dismaying. The long-lived Jonson went out of his way to make things easy for biographers, leaving an extensive paper trail ...”

“... probably the most important book yet to appear in the dissident-Communist perspective. Fortunately David Fernbach’s translation makes it accessible (apart from a few Volapük lapses like ‘genial’ for génial) and copes ruggedly with the steeper philosophical faces. The perspective itself is questionable, however. Without objecting for a moment to the ...”

“... Organised crime is a paradigm for success in America, business and fortune are crime by other means. But the bounce and orchestration of the tune, which we hear before we hear any of the lyrics, tell another story, suggest dance and pleasure, the good life, loud and unapologetic. Or they would suggest this if they were not synchronised with the slamming ...”

“... which was deplored even at the time of the centenary of publication 38 years ago, when Elizabeth David pointed out that the currently available Mrs Beeton didn’t contain a single recipe from the original. That this is an odd state of affairs does not of itself make a facsimile of the 1861 book an interesting object. People buy and use the modern Mrs Beeton ...”

“... other than supportive of slavery – if not in principle then as an existing institution – which means that the black figures shackled to his monument can the more aptly be regarded as slaves.This was certainly the response of Herman Melville, who visited Liverpool in 1839 and wrote about the monument a decade later in his autobiographical novel ...”

“... The bank was instrumental in the rise of the modern British state and its global reach, but as David Kynaston shows in his official history, it has always had an uncertain relationship with the state, mediating awkwardly between the private imperatives of finance and the public demands of politics. When the bank was founded in 1694, its business was to ...”

“... Revolution. Yet he remains curiously absent from popular memory, and from the academic curriculum. David Carpenter, long-time professor of medieval history at King’s College London, remembers that his tutor at Oxford jumped straight from John to Edward I and left out Henry III altogether. During his long labours on this massive two-volume ...”

“... including me and, somewhat later, Laura Freeman, first encountered the work of Miró and David Jones, Henry Moore, Brancusi, Ben Nicholson, Alfred Wallis, Gaudier-Brzeska and others. Like Ede’s life it spans the century; but, more than that, for those of us who had not grown up in houses where there were grand pianos or interesting pebbles ...”

“... words were generated by the celebrated youngish American novelist, journalist and story-writer David Foster Wallace. Although willing to tilt at shiny targets of grammatical contention (the ending of sentences with prepositions etc), Wallace was, for the most part, hunting bigger game: America is in the midst of a protracted Crisis of Authority in matters ...”

“... is illegally presented with a birthday cake. A Tory staffer throws up as the exit poll drops. David Cameron keeps his bladder full all night to achieve maximum focus during EU negotiations. The Bank of England takes emergency action to stave off financial panic following the ‘mini-budget’. David Bowie implores ...”

“... War. Hersh wanted the story to speak for itself. He finally gave it to the independent journalist David Obst’s Dispatch News Service. Thirty-six newspapers picked up the story, but the New York Times wasn’t among them; Time, Newsweek and the television networks ignored it. Self-censorship was pervasive. The Washington Post was an exception: the Post’s ...”

“... materials, because Guston apprenticed himself as a muralist, influenced by Mexican masters such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and intensely preoccupied by considerations of social justice in action. His works were monumental, site-specific and scattered, and not all have survived. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) employed him from 1935 onwards to ...”

“... proposal for a new line from London to Birmingham’. The line was to operate at 400 kph – which means few curves and low gradients – and had to emphasise connections to Heathrow. Given these constraints, the only viable route was via Old Oak Common, six miles west of Euston, where the line could connect with Crossrail, the east-west route through London ...”

“... playing in the world’s best leagues – Fifa have been able to go up to a Cup of 32 teams. This means that only the top two teams in each group go through, which in turn is making the football at the group stage much more competitive and interesting. 9 June. At the last World Cup the cameramen would often, when Brazil were playing, focus in on Ronaldo’s ...”

“... than Z Unit that eventually caught up with Mullah Yussuf, and ground troops remained the primary means of retaining order in the Empire. There was a lot of Empire and many hostile subjects, so soldiers became used to acting with brutal expedition. When Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer resorted to the quasi-legal technique of martial law in Amritsar in ...”