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“... 1934, is a double ethnography, both an assiduous record of the mission’s findings and a set of field notes for an ethnography of the ethnographers. It is also about the author and his many preoccupations. Leiris could easily see himself in regressive series: a person looking at a version of that person looking at another version still. In Phantom Africa we ...”

“... out the whole basin there’s nothing warm in the colour tones even then, just an eerie depth of field so clear throughout its focal range that it’s hard to keep an accurate sense of perspective. Most writers find their way to Los Angeles from somewhere else and the city has been refracted through the lens of their disenchantment, remorse, bad ...”

“... Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ of 1967) of invulnerable power: ‘If you tap into the purple field you get a sixth sense, heightened hearing, a field of vision that picks up anything that shouldn’t be there, the smell of Charles, and even on some of the blackest nights on earth, I had the ability to see Charles in ...”

“... helped me to answer that casual question. A study of Melanesian culture, it does refer to Mead’s field reports from New Guinea and to her interest in adolescent and sexual behaviour: it also surveys the whole record of anthropological reporting in the region. The state of the art that it reveals is rather disconcerting, but the manner of revealing it is ...”

“... may be best known for his work in physics shortly after World War Two. Many equations in quantum field theory were producing meaningless, infinite figures. Dyson helped, if not to eliminate the infinities, then at least to sweep them under the carpet so that calculations gave sensible results. It was, however, Disturbing the Universe (1979) and Infinite in ...”

“... morning in February. This widening of lyric’s empire to encompass more or less the entire field of poetry led the critic René Wellek to declare that ‘one must abandon attempts to define the general nature of the lyric or the lyrical. Nothing beyond generalities of the tritest kind can result from it.’ He had a point: the word ‘lyric’ was used ...”

“... and intellectual instrument of tremendous sensitivity and precision with a social depth of field long out of fashion. Aside from Franzen’s energetic promotion, the main engine of Fox’s current revival is the publication of her memoir. Astringent, candid, and written in the same elegant prose as her novels, Borrowed Finery is as haunting as any of ...”

“... 15 silhouetted icons – time bombs, handcuffs, a car, a man running – with each representing a field of activity: roadside bombs, prisoner escapes, car bombs and the clearance of apostates’ homes. Next to a picture of a pistol is the word ‘assassinations’ and the number 1083: the number of targeted killings Isis claims to have pulled off in the year ...”

“... entitled ‘Lost, a Valuable Object’. ‘It will be a good thing to get back to the tree in the field that everyone is working for … Get back to it as fact, as a reality. As something more than an ideal.’ Piper’s art from this point turned increasingly on facts of history and topography. By 1939 the stormlit, nervy rhapsodies over ruins for which he ...”

“... affectionate, and all life-long.’ What of that first impetuous excursion to Delphi with young Frank Lushington, when the happy pair decked their hats and horses with wild flowers? ‘I do not think the key to this is precisely sexual attraction, but the spring in Greece at full blast,’ says Levi, in the spirit of Honi soit. The diaries of that period ...”

“... of housekeeping: she had had to come to terms with another family problem, a wastrel brother Frank who gambled heavily and gave away family jewels to his women. This last was a heinous offence in the eyes of Princess May, who in later life was able to recover unauthorised gifts from various quarters. As a great lover of jewels, she must have been ...”

“... real ‘moles’, if any, were the previous Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence, Sir Frank Cooper, and British Aerospace. Similarly, the warrant issued to investigate the Scottish BBC was so wide that it could have dragged in everything from Postman Pat to The Epilogue. At the same time, broadcasting’s technological base is in a state of ...”

“... of Greek artists. The main weakness of 19th-century understanding of the Greeks lies in the field of Greek religion. Some people recoiled from it because it was not Christian; others took it to be more like Christianity than it really was; few saw that the place it occupied in Greek society could not be compared with the place Christianity has occupied ...”

“... FACTS series on BBC2 to satisfy yourself that these concepts aren’t much in use on the training field. ‘Magic’, ‘class’, ‘great’, ‘nice’, ‘terrific’ and ‘unlucky’ seem to be the main epithets on offer there. In the post-goal frenzy, when the players roll and cuddle and leap in that delightful way, what are they saying to each ...”

“... Fella, there is a group photograph of the entire Modern Movement in architecture (the lot, bar Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe), and there’s Jim, modestly in the back row but practically in the middle. The progress (or retreat) of the Modern Movement in architecture from its Thirties role as a revolutionary cadre of the Popular Front to its ...”