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“... or scientists or academics with high aesthetic ideals and dodgy personal histories, like Victor Maskell, the Anthony Blunt-ish hero of The Untouchable, or the murderer Freddie Montgomery in The Book of Evidence, or the unnamed narrators of the string of novels which followed. These men are set apart from other people by a massive sense of self-worth ...”

“... Kennedy dress smashed the previous world record for the sale of a female costume: a blue velvet Victor Edelstein dress belonging to Princess Diana that sold for £222,500 in June 1997. The actor and peroxophile Tony Curtis, who must have forgotten that he once said kissing Marilyn was like kissing Hitler, got out of his seat at the auction to tell reporters ...”

“... In the film about Noël Coward that Adam Low made for Arena in 1998, there is a shot of Arnold Wesker watching a recording of a Royal Court fundraising gala in which Coward is marvellous but clearly miserable as the restaurant owner in an extract from Wesker’s The Kitchen. Less emblematic but equally germane is the story, told in Philip Hoare’s 1995 biography, of Coward’s visit to the Court to see David Storey’s grittily realistic Rugby League play The Changing Room ...”

“... about watching the world’s wealthiest people spend 19 minutes bidding up, up, up, until a victor emerges half a billion dollars less rich. The crowd gasped as the zeros multiplied, and erupted into cheers when one of five prospective buyers phoned in the winning bid. The painting sold for $450 million including fees – the highest sum ever commanded ...”

“... Born in 1838, Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste, Comte de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam came of an illustrious Breton line, latterly more distinguished for its poverty and eccentricity. His grandfather, who fought against the Revolution but failed to thrive under the Restoration, wrote to the Minister of Justice in 1815 that, had his name not been so long already, he would have asked the reigning monarch, Louis XVIII, ‘to add to it that of “poor devil”, and that is a name I really deserve ...”

“... Charles Bataille said of his friend Félix Nadar, ‘turbulent, unexpected, terrifying’. Adam Begley’s biography describes a life lived so frenetically, it’s surprising it lasted so long – Nadar died at the age of ninety, in 1910. Yet he is remembered today primarily for the stillness and serenity of his photographic portraits of 19th-century ...”

“... man left alone in the universe would have no rights whatsoever, but he would have obligations.’ Victor Phillips, the eponymous hero of Lanchester’s new novel, doesn’t think of himself as a man of big themes, and so wouldn’t be drawn either to reading about them, or indeed to mocking them. Whether or not Mr Phillips would have been Simone Weil’s cup ...”

“... first novelist to represent the historical process, the first portrayer of society in terms that Adam Smith might and Karl Marx did approve. David Brown makes the academic case admirably. He begins by modestly disclaiming originality: he is developing insights put forward by others in recent years, and only applying them more carefully to a selection of the ...”

“... ones, where Bellow suddenly drops out of the race, as when he sends stamps to his son. ‘Dear Adam – Here are some stamps. Countries sometimes disappear and leave nothing behind but some postage stamps. But Papas and Adams go on and on.’ He much prefers sparring with a big and capable admirer like Leon Wieseltier than passing on news to his ...”

“... match between the US and the Soviet Union, refereed by China, which finally declared the US the victor by itself embracing capitalism.) ‘Conservatism became revolutionary’ while the left became conservative, forced to defend the gains of the past. The result today is clear: a ‘world in decomposition’ in which ‘most … have ceased to believe in a ...”

“... of inquiry into ‘witchcraft violence and ritual murders’. Led by the Venda anthropologist Victor Ralushai, the commission documented the recent wave of witch-hunts and medicine murders in grisly detail but paid more attention to what it considered, like King James I, to be the real threat of witchcraft. Another anthropologist, Isak Niehaus, has since ...”

“... the children … were picked up by their grandfather, the maiden aunts, Abel’s brother-in-law Victor, and the uncle who was a priest, and scrutinised as they discussed to which of the two lines a nose or a type of hair or dimples belonged, from which Ponce or Cañizares or Salcedo the baby had inherited the tendency to cry so loudly – those strong ...”

“... this life, real wisdom, and the surest and readiest means of obtaining both safety and advantage. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments On 13 March President George W. Bush wrote to four Republican Senators informing them that he would not be ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing worldwide emissions of ‘greenhouse’ gases, especially carbon ...”

“... where, between the giants and the scatology, Rabelais describes the Library of St Victor in Paris – perhaps Europe’s earliest imaginary library. Among the volumes Pantagruel finds are The Codpiece of the Law; The Testes of Theology; On the Art of Discreetly Farting in Company; Three Books on How to Chew Bacon; Martingale Breeches with ...”

“... an alternate reality, in the ‘new-old world that Godley’s theorem wrought’. This refers to Adam Godley, from his 2009 novel The Infinities, a mathematician who cooked up the world-changing Brahma Postulate. This is something to do with quantum physics, and it means that there are an infinite number of worlds, that history has gone into reverse, that ...”