“... early 20th-century East Coast rich: Groton, that exclusive school for the rearing of ‘perfect Christian gentlemen’, and then Harvard. At Harvard, Francis, who was now known as either ‘Fuzzy’ or ‘Duke’, proceeded fairly steadily through the world of exclusivity, joining, for example, the élite Porcellian Club. Yes, it was banking next: Lazard ...”

“... to an old tradition whose gods and powers have long been superseded by a higher revelation. I am a Christian, and thus not obliged to be indiscriminate in religious matters’ – while at the same time according, as he does consistently, a sort of Jindyworobak priority and authority on Australian soil to ancient rituals and mysticisms of the Aborigines. But ...”

“... that these rebellions amount to much. They manifest themselves as the high seriousness of trivia (John Baldessari’s alphabetical list of the contents of his files of movie stills); as Native American bluster and vanity; as halfbaked intellectualism; above all, as the intoning of feminist and other contemporary cultural pieties. (Yvonne Rainer: ‘At this ...”

“... development or under-development. Ged Martin and Benjamin Kline discuss emigration and identities. John MacKenzie supplies a piece on imperial art. Finally, Marshall, followed by an Australian, an African and an Indian, offer their own, inevitably different, verdicts on Empire’s legacy. Throughout, we are reminded that British power to control events was ...”

“... screen of hysteria blots out the folded hemlocks.’ It was decades later that poets such as John Ashbery or Paul Muldoon helped Anglophone poetry to a convincing use of Surrealist licence for its own ways and meanings. In any case, at the end of the Thirties Gascoyne himself had effectively abandoned Surrealism, and with it ‘The Rites of ...”

“... could order the fragments in her own way; but even this seems rather too programmatic, a bit too John Cage. It is certainly better to dip into the book than to read it through – one of the many endearing things about Pessoa is that he makes conscientiousness seem silly – and the fragments should be read as a series of bulletins, without assuming one ...”

“... again that viruses, too, can be explained as parcels delivered by comet express. In the medieval Christian universe, there wasn’t much room for alien civilisation – the cosmos of Dante and Aquinas had man at the centre, surrounded by the more perfect spheres of Heaven. The Copernican revolution changed all that. Even before it was clear that the Sun was ...”

“... and tells me ideally she would vote for a bizarre dream-ticket of Bradley and Republican senator John McCain, who both advocate it. But most are straightforwardly undecided between Bradley and the other Democratic contender and favourite, Al Gore. Bradley arrives, six and a half feet tall and ramrod straight. He walks round the room, shaking hands and saying ...”

“... terrorism, legitimising more and more suspensions of legal and other rights? The ominous aspect of John Ashcroft’s recent claim that ‘terrorists use America’s freedom as a weapon against us’ carries the obvious implication that we should limit our freedom in order to defend ourselves. Such statements from top American officials, especially Rumsfeld and ...”

“... Cheyne and his diet. He was favourably quoted in Tom Jones; Samuel Johnson commended his books; John Wesley’s Primitive Physick copied out whole sections of Cheyne’s work; and his patients included Pope, Gay, Beau Nash, Richardson, the Methodist Countess of Huntingdon, Robert Walpole’s adolescent daughter, Catherine (who died under Cheyne’s care of ...”

“... Young Man Luther and Gandhi’s Truth – came out in 1958 and 1969; the first inspired John Osborne’s play, the latter won several prizes. In both he focused on turning-points (or identity crises) in the lives of the great men to whom he felt drawn. Luther is rather more tied down to the psychoanalytical than Gandhi: the amorphousness of Indian ...”

“... out of Van but also for ‘rescuing’ the Armenians by transforming their ancient, afflicted Christian kingdom into a modern Soviet Socialist Republic. He told people in America either that he was Russian – sometimes that he was Maxim Gorky’s nephew and Kandinsky’s student – or that he came from the Caucasus. En route to their transatlantic ...”

“... anniversary of a school that one of Luther’s followers wrested away from the monastery of St John in 1529 and renamed the Johanneum. Great figures of the German Enlightenment had taught or studied there; C.P.E. Bach and Telemann had been music masters during the 18th century. All this is to make clear that my image of my father before I knew him is of a ...”

“... his subjects were to believe, on the most central and currently contested doctrines making up the Christian religion. So far so good. No one will quarrel with that. But most historians have viewed successive versions of official Henrician doctrine as a mishmash and muddle, committee work, a constantly moving target, from the Ten Articles to the ...”

“... capitalists’ internationalism is suspicious and effete, their cosmopolitanism is a danger to Christian nationalism, and their efforts to wean the world from fossil fuels so that they can make more money from renewables only delay the end times.The epitome of woke capital is Arif Naqvi, a private equity multimillionaire and ardent global free-marketeer ...”