Matthew d'Ancona

“On [[September 11 attacks|9/11], bin Laden and his allies were thinking of avenging the [[w:Granada War|end of Muslim rule in Spanish Andalusia in 1492; of the historic humiliation of the Ottoman army at Vienna in 1683; of the fall of the Caliphate in 1922; and of the intolerable presence since 1990 of US troops in Saudi Arabia, land of the sacred sites of Medina and Mecca. We, in contrast, were thinking of what to have for supper.”

“The most important political divide in the world is no longer between left and right. It is not even between liberal and authoritarian. It is between those who grasp the sheer scale and potentially revolutionary consequences – in the US and around the world – of what Donald Trump is trying to do in his second term; and those who don't.”

“[On Russell Brand's performances] There was a time when he hid behind the theatricality of high camp; which, as Susan Sontag teaches us, "is a solvent of morality. It neutralises moral indignation, sponsors playfulness". Posturing as a Goth Noel Coward, he was, onstage, remarkably open about his sexual conduct. But it was hard to take seriously a man who looked like the lovechild of Lenny Kravitz and Charles Hawtrey; an explosion in a wig factory. That was his cunning. He sniffed out zones of impunity and crouched within them.”