Almost everyone who met Philip Sassoon here or elsewhere described him as strange, unknowable and, ah, oriental - except for Virginia Woolf, who characteristically called him "an underbred Whitechapel Jew".
His report, published two years later, characteristically called Europe, Ideal of Our Generation, was seminal in setting out a goal of long-term integration and was accordingly sidelined at the time by European leaders.
Burleigh's second, related objective is to redeem modern history from what he characteristically calls the "intellectually dishonest'" Stalin-like attempts "to airbrush Christianity out of the historical record".
His account of the first movement of Mozart's String Quartet in G major, K387, revealing what he characteristically calls its "variety of affective nuances", closely analyses every dynamic contrast, the alternation between diatonic and chromatic harmony, "the hidden and symmetrical contrast of sentiments".
Mirren keeps coming back for more, though she is characteristically modest about the scene: "I call it the geriatric fight," she says.
In a video posted online, Mr. Sunde was characteristically unrepentant, calling the ruling "bizarre" and adding that he had no intention of paying the damages.
RICHARD DAWKINS Evolutionary biologist; professor of the public understanding of science, Oxford; author of The Magic of Reality Essentialism – what I've called "the tyranny of the discontinuous mind" – stems from Plato, with his characteristically Greek geometer's view of things.
The reel of clips that follows is characteristically insane, vacillating between dramatic piano, chugging heavy metal palm muting, and what I think is called happy hardcore techno music, but I literally know nothing about techno music except that a lot of people hate Deadmau5.
