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“... independence from France in 1975, the Comoros has seen twenty coups. Behind many of them was Bob Denard, a French mercenary and collector of world religions (he tried three: Catholicism, Judaism and Islam) and wives (eight), who inspired Frederick Forsyth’s novel Dogs of War. He was a modern corsair, he told the New York Times, but instead of receiving ...”

“... because she is a widowed woman, utterly obedient to Bogart’s character. Bogart made another fine film in that period: In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray, opposite Gloria Grahame (Bacall had wanted the role). It’s the story of an embittered screenwriter who has a violent, if not murderous, edge. No other film used Bogart’s hostility ...”

“... his authority as prime minister. He was the head of a very complex administration in which a fine balance had to be kept between parties and personalities. Much depended on the skill with which he handled turbulent characters like Beaverbrook, Bevin, Dalton or Cripps. For most of 1942 Churchill was under threat from Sir Stafford Cripps, who made little ...”

“... their performance practice. It is as if we had only the lyrics, without recordings or melodies, of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Joan Baez – and those only in indifferent Portuguese translations. Most of their power and all of their subtlety would vanish. For similar reasons, the troubadours have more often been honoured as cultural pioneers than admired as ...”

“... and saw the influence of the supernatural in daily life. Here her acknowledged inspiration is Bob Scribner, the radical Australian Catholic historian who died prematurely in 1998, after having shown in his studies of the German Reformation that Lutherans could be just as superstitious as their opponents. The Reformation of the Landscape takes this ...”

“... swallowed a watch-chain and never knowingly passed it). And he lists children’s hobbies: Cubs, Bob-a-Job, Cowboys and Indians, Sunday School and prepubescent sex (‘mucky behaviour’ but ‘it didn’t involve anyone who wasn’t our age’). To list something is to own it. Many have written their lives as confession – the Rousseau approach – but ...”

“... powers whittled away and its funding cut off. The scope and funding of the Bureau of the Budget (BOB) was increased in its stead. The effect, as Katznelson points out, was to limit the federal government’s primary role in economic affairs to fiscal policy, rather than direct intervention. The BOB could expand government ...”

“... Richardson v. Jhumpa Lahiri), the graduate degrees they award (Doctor of Philosophy v. Master of Fine Arts) and their perceived objects of study (‘literature’ v. ‘fiction’). Mark McGurl’s The Programme Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing, a study of Planet MFA conducted from Planet PhD, might not strike the casual reader as an ...”

“... alone in his dreams, Galileo unappreciated and persecuted. Never mind that Paul Rabinow’s fine book Making PCR makes a persuasive case that many people at the Cetus Corporation in Emeryville, California, where Mullis then worked, had a hand in it, and that the discovery of PCR might be more plausibly referred to a corporate ethos (and a team of ...”

“... about a Midwestern farmer plucked off his tractor and whirled out to sea by a tornado. Other fine pieces are ‘Voices from the Dead: Cowboy’, about a rodeo rider bucked to death by a steer; ‘Rhythm’, which starts out by describing the standard progression of rock-and-roll chords and turns into a dazzling catalogue of the visual and aural rhythms ...”

“... desire to marry President Julius Nyerere or to box him with one arm tied behind his back – was a fine racist joke. It was the easiest story in the world to write: Radio Uganda, monitored in Nairobi, provided 90 per cent of the press coverage, and the rest was laid on in interviews with ‘His Excellency’ by ...”

“... because he wasn’t) has a go at a mate of the Old Grey Whistle Test’s host, Whispering Bob Harris, in a London nightclub. Re-released by Virgin, ‘God save’ becomes Britain’s biggest selling single in Jubilee Week. The next single, ‘Pretty Vacant’ (pronounced Pretty Vay-CUNT-ah!), is deemed inoffensive enough to get the Pistols onto Top of ...”

“... of groups – the children, for example. He was obviously delighted to find a family portrait by Bob Stanley made up of square panels – two of each family member – bolted together. As illustrated, there are six panels, showing father and two children – Mum took her two away when the marriage broke up. This neatly supports Halle’s notion that the ...”

“... such as John Dowland and Thomas Campion.’ (She might have looked sideways to Noël Coward, Bob Dylan or Cole Porter; to John Cage’s poetry, Ezra Pound’s operas, the compositions of Christopher Fry or Anthony Burgess.) One of the aims of her study is to rescue Gurney’s later work from accusations of madness, and offer it as evidence of his ...”

“... era of collage in all sorts of media: not just Robert Rauschenberg, but also John Ashbery and Bob Dylan. For Barthelme, it wasn’t simply a matter of playing with found forms or language. That was ‘cheapo surrealism’. Instead his stories explore situations (‘The Party’, ‘Brain Damage’, ‘City Life’) that are experienced as collage. In ...”