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“... violence. I have a sense that for some hapless, underemployed and spiritually ill-schooled young Muslims, the Koran is a style accessory that goes hand in hand with martial arts training and watching videos of aeroplanes being blown up. On the other hand, there are those Western infidels, whose reading background is mostly in fiction, who pick up an ...”

“... can be seen to have ‘the precision of cooked spaghetti’. A more recent American aesthetician, Arthur Danto, is one of those who make the impossible claim that their experience of art is more valuable than any that could be derived from the ‘kitsch or sentimental outpourings’ which other people enjoy. Behind the claims, variously stated, for ‘high ...”

“... as early as 1940, when Chamberlain and the arch-appeasers were branded ‘the guilty men’ by a young Michael Foot and two other socialist polemicists. They overstated what was an arguable case, that the executors of appeasement’s closing phase had been arrogant, ignorant and insensitive; which naturally bred a counter-argument to the effect that they had ...”

“... As soon as they got back from their honeymoon Monroe told a friend, ‘I’m going to marry Arthur Miller,’ and eventually she did. She left DiMaggio when he beat her up after she’d filmed the scene in The Seven-Year Itch where her dress is blown up over her head as she stands on a subway grate. Yet, almost incredibly, DiMaggio does not come off ...”

“... in 1837, John Constable grew increasingly preoccupied with printmaking and collaborated with the young engraver David Lucas to translate his oil sketches and paintings into 22 mezzotints, part of what would become known as English Landscape Scenery. Proofs survive, and are covered with the handwritten revisions and instructions with which Constable besieged ...”

“... Teishi became an empress in 990, at the age of 14, when her father was appointed regent to the young emperor. But by the time Shonagon arrived, in 993, Teishi’s power was already in decline, along with her father’s; in 995 the regent died and two of Teishi’s brothers were exiled.This is the world that Shonagon writes from and ...”

“... distorted reflections of lacquered doors. I first met the hyacinthine, ringleted, foggyvoiced young Guibert through Foucault in 1983. He was perhaps Foucault’s best friend. Although Foucault liked working with women (Arlette Farge was a favourite), he didn’t like socialising with them; once I invited Susan Sontag to dinner and he hissed at me when she ...”

“... chorus; in rapid ascending arpeggios as in a trumpet voluntary, we blasted out a paean to ‘the young shepherdess in clogs and woollen skirt’ who took up arms and walked out fearlessly to confront her king and restore him to his throne. One of the many verses goes: Fiers enfants de la Lorraine Des montagnes à la plaine, Sur nous, plane ombre ...”

“... business-savvy and cultured, and she smoked and drove a car; she was not only a very lovely young woman but a modern one. It was a love match, and it made perfect sense. Charlie sealed the deal when he had an ‘orange tree, heavy with fruit’ delivered to Hellen’s aunt, who had come to visit. As Hellen later put it, ‘No Southern woman could resist ...”

“... When in his late teens and early twenties he began his career in London, people noted how ‘young and schoolboyish’ he was. His diaries from that time record enthusiasms for the novels of J.M. Barrie and Arthur Ransome, for Emil and the Detectives and The Sword in the Stone. And he was much pre-occupied with writing ...”

“... In​ 1957, in a remote village on the south coast of Bali, the young anthropologist Clifford Geertz was watching a cremation ceremony spill down a hillside when the crowd suddenly parted, ‘as in a DeMille movie’, and there, propped up on her walking stick, stood Margaret Mead. She was on her way to India for ‘a World Conference on some sort of World Problem’, and had tracked down Geertz and his wife on her ‘notoriously bad ankles ...”

“... of a popular and oppositional British film culture. Indeed, its cast of gays, blacks and young characters made it seem a product of a hypothetical GLC film unit. Small wonder that Norman Stone bemoaned ‘the overall feeling of disgust and decay’ conveyed by the film and complained that Kureishi was inciting a ‘sleazy, sick hedonism’. Audiences ...”

“... vaunt and joust. Anyone who hesitates near me, these days, has to read me a chapter of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I am considering adding knight errant to the profession of railway guard. Knight errant means knight wanderer, but I also think it means knight who has made a mistake. Mistakes are made all the time; it is a human ...”

“... I did not respond to the call, but it reminded me of someone who did: Pavlik Morozov, the heroic young Soviet denouncer of the early 1930s whose legend is the subject of Catriona Kelly’s new book. Unfortunately in Pavlik’s case the suspicious person he dobbed in was his own father, and angry relatives took revenge by murdering him. Pavlik won a lasting ...”

“... Kidman in black velvet, or like Audrey Tautou, the latest face of Chanel No. 5, who also plays the young Coco Chanel in Anne Fontaine’s Coco before Chanel. So far as one can tell, Chanel was never fully contented (she boasted that she did not require ‘that daily dose of poison, recently invented, that we call happiness’ and her restless scissors were ...”