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“... Revolution. In Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba, the American anthropologist Yvonne Daniel tells how Fidel Castro and his ministers, in their effort to bring Cuban art into line with revolutionary goals, decided that they needed to single out a national dance. There were several likely candidates – conga, for example, or ...”

“... proselytising for atheism (which includes not just Hitchens but people like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) is just another surrogate religion is a familiar one. It’s what the God-botherers always say about the God-bashers. But in the case of Christopher Hitchens it’s not entirely convincing. The blustering, obscene, insatiable, limitlessly restless ...”

“... of the Modern, and though she often went about in shapeless robes and sandals, Pierre Balmain and Yvonne Davidson were pleased to dress her. ‘She accepted herself as she was,’ wrote Lincoln Steffens. ‘She was large; she dressed as a large woman ... You felt ... her self-contentment and shared her self-composure, but, best of all, the prophetess gave you ...”

“... levitation, quite often when mediums were strapped to chairs, although the Victorian prodigy Daniel Dunglas Home was reported by reputable spectators at a gathering in London to have floated out of a window. Home was a skilled conjurer, who may have used the so-called ‘Balducci illusion’, which involves standing at an angle to give the impression of ...”