“... two decades since De la postcolonie was published, little seems to have changed. As the economist Peter Lawrence wrote in 2023, the ‘combination of rising indebtedness and a slowdown in global growth … has seen the return of structural adjustment programmes’. The language of free trade and privatisation has lost any appeal it once had. There has been ...”

“... my constant wish to stay where I was. I imagine myself, child and adult, curled up in an armchair, reading and being told (as a child) or invited (as an adult) to go out and do something. I cannot think why a person sitting with evident contentment in an armchair causes the desire in others for their immediate activity. As a child I would leave the flat when ...”

“... was added to the bad ‘news’. Women become clocks, always ticking away, like the crocodile in Peter Pan who had swallowed the alarm clock. Women must marry and have children immediately, skipping the attractions of further education or interesting careers. There were no men and yet it was every young woman’s painful duty to try to find and hang onto a ...”

“... thus never any real risk of the government being defeated on the issue. When the decisive third reading of the European Communities Bill came in July 1972, it passed by 301 to 284 votes. Britain had finally made it into Europe. But there was a substantial catch. While still in opposition, Heath had promised that he would not take the country into the EEC ...”

“... film covering a Senior Citizen’s use of the buses can occur. One day to Hounslow, another to Reading or Heathrow. The bus people ought to be pleased, but it might need their permission. Then Mr Bennett could put his feet up more and rake it in, possibly. October 1980 Miss S. has started hankering after a caravan trailer and has just missed one she saw ...”

“... slowly become clear. The revelations of the Grenfell inquiry, so plainly and painfully recorded by Peter Apps of Inside Housing, are echoed not just in thousands of other cases of ghastly what-might-have-beens but in the lackadaisical, flailing process of undoing what was done.* The inquiry revealed a tangle of deniability masquerading as responsibility, with ...”

“... disputes of early Christianity with the quarrels of the early RSDLP, whose minutes he was also reading, in mind. In 1968 he completed a level-headed dissertation on Julian the Apostate, a ruler psychologically unbalanced but programmatically more coherent than he was often given credit for being, whose correspondence he translated. A year earlier, he had ...”

“... of tarmac, hummocks and safety barriers behind a spiked steel fence, with a small, cheap sign reading QTS Data Center (it uses the American spelling) Development Campus. It was a mild sunny day and there was a pleasant breeze. As I stood in the stillness between the electric vehicle future that wasn’t and the promise of a brilliant AI future to come, I ...”

“... Father Jolliffe opting for the King James version using charity. He took time at the start of the reading to explain to the congregation that charity was love and not anything to do with flag days or people in doorways. Or if it was to do with people in doorways that was only one of its meanings. Treacher would have scorned such condescension and let the ...”

“... electronic cash system’ – a technology Satoshi went on to develop as bitcoin. Reading the articles on his laptop, Wright knew his old life was over. By this point, cameras and reporters were outside his former home and his office. They had long heard rumours, but the Gizmodo and Wired stories had sent the Australian media into a frenzy. It ...”

“... small, and they belonged to some of the same student organisations, and since they both used the reading room of the National Library, it’s likely that they would have seen a great deal of each other in the years around the turn of the century. The clash between the two over ideas of language and cultural identity would make its way into the encounter ...”

“... flat to theirs, number 112, where the young Syrian refugee Mohammad Alhajali sat on a sofa reading the Quran. Mohammad’s brother, Omar, had already fled with the firefighters, thinking his brother was behind him. As the Talabis left there was dense smoke and chaos all around them, but the young man just sat there, as if waiting for something to ...”