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“... How​ does a comic writer describe a world that has stopped being funny? What to say when the system you satirise is swept away, when parts of the population are killed, when the survivors become refugees, drifting away en masse but it’s unclear where to? Teffi was faced with these questions as she tried to make sense of revolution in St Petersburg, as she fled through the Civil War, as she crossed the Black Sea along with other refugees to start a new life in a place which would in turn be engulfed by fascism and war ...”

“... but supremely accessible, thus instantly comprehensible to all but the slowest learners. Philip Jackson, the sculptor, has created a bronze euphemism which dodges the crucial matter and fails to prompt reflection on the sacrifice of the conscripted. We are not propelled back to the horrors and mess and brutality of the Second World War. Rather, through its ...”

“... hierarchy: “prestige, life, honour”.’ Which came first, life or honour? That, as Julian Jackson points out in his tremendous life of de Gaulle, was the nub of the conflict between the two men, and led eventually to the Ile d’Yeu for one and the Elysée for the other. Jackson is the author of a memorable sequence ...”

“... far the worst appointment made by Boris Johnson in his cabinet reshuffle last month was that of Anne-Marie Trevelyan as secretary of state for international development. An ardent Brexiteer, Trevelyan has no known interest in overseas development; just about her only previous public utterance on the subject was an ...”

“... people’s liberty, for whom the fraternal citizenry are willing to shed their blood), or even of Marie-Antoinette (personification of her country’s violated old order, to be defended by a thousand chivalric swords). Either way, The Court of Holyrood offers Mary as a sexily vulnerable icon, around whom a brotherhood of modern national subjects are ...”

“... moralising title Alcott would have despised) in England; Petites Américaines and Le Docteur March marie ses filles (how patriarchal can you get?) in France. In the New York Times Anne Hollander has argued that the movie’s explicit feminism, abolitionism and colloquialisms reflect the present decade rather than the ...”

“... East. A separate gallery showcases the Oscar gowns and suits of stars from Jodie Foster and Samuel Jackson to Jakob Dylan against the background of a silent video loop of American Gigolo and other Armani-designed films. Sections devoted to elaborately beaded, exquisitely embroidered and sleekly tailored garments in black and white, red, greige (Armani’s ...”