“... into the UK, at least for a period of time. The nature of Britain’s economy and labour market means that immigration law cannot be cleanly separated from issues of employment, welfare, health and education. One of the dangers of the ‘hostile environment’ policy is that it deliberately collapses the distinction between judicial due process and ...”

“... Roger Williamson was burned to death at Zandvoort in 1973, while his friend and fellow driver David Purley tried desperately to beat out the flames as millions of TV viewers watched, Lauda was asked by the press why he hadn’t stopped to help. ‘I’m paid to race,’ he said, ‘not to stop.’ The ‘formula’ of F1 refers to the various rules ...”

“... not extravagantly lamented, when she was 15, Angelica early on became the pride, joy and main means of financial support of her father, Johann Joseph, an itinerant decorative painter. The family moved to Milan when Angelica was about 13 and she was soon turning out highly saleable copies of Old Masters. Her childhood, such as it was, like that of her ...”

“... the couplets in Catullus’ Latin. Compared to the deadpan opacity achieved by very similar means in the poem to Cicero, this protestation has an almost embarrassing straightforwardness that is anything but urbane. Catullus takes himself very seriously here, and calls on some very serious concepts, deeply engrained in Roman tradition. As with the note ...”

“... to address the pain. His partner, L., who is Spanish and ‘has a European sense of what it means to be ill’, urges him to see a doctor, but he refuses. The first summer of the Covid pandemic is not a time to go to the emergency room. And the narrator is wary of the American health system, where ‘doctors waste your money and your time, and send you ...”

“... how from these laconic texts, figures like Rebekah, Jacob, Joseph, Judah, Tamar, Moses, Saul, David and Ruth emerge, characters who, beyond any archetypal role they may play as bearers of a divine mandate, have been etched as indelibly vivid individuals in the imagination of a hundred generations’. This aim, he warns us, cannot be achieved without ...”

“... or fame exceeded their proven abilities. Wittgenstein, the mathematician Max Newman, the economist David Champernowne, von Neumann, Robin Gandy the logician, were men with whom he could be at ease, free of the social patina and the trappings of respectibility which repelled him. There are records of Turing’s participation in pre-war Cambridge, in ...”

“... Johnson proudly asserts that he makes no effort to ‘conceal’ his ‘opinions’. What this means is that his approach to history is polemical, one-sided and prone to gross oversimplifications. An excellent storyteller, he describes very well those figures from the past whom he admires, from George Washington to Ronald Reagan. Those he dislikes, on the ...”

“... Wollheim has to say about particular works of art is certainly not obvious. A start-ling but by no means unusual case is provided by the beautiful and moving double portrait (in the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston) by Degas of his sister the Duchesse de Morbili looking up with raised eyebrows and placing her hand tenderly on her husband’s shoulder. Wollheim ...”

“... I read it in Heinemann’s Best Short Stories, the annual selection edited by Giles Gordon and David Hughes. I made a mental note of the author’s name, Helen Dunmore, because I’d never heard of her before. A name to watch for, I thought, and watched for it in The Best of Best Short Stories, 1986-95. Dunmore was not included, which I thought a puzzling ...”

“... relations linking him with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (d. 1282), the last native Prince, but this by no means persuaded all the Welsh to see him plainly as their leader. The intrepid Dafydd Gam of Brecon, whose name commemorates a squint, gained legendary status as one of Glyn Dŵr’s most committed opponents. He died at Agincourt, among the many Welshmen serving ...”

“... her a wonderful massage, and instantly transforms her from sex object to sensuous liberated woman. David Kunzle challenged this narrative in Fashion and Fetishism: A Social History of Corsets, Tight Lacing and Other Forms of Body Sculpture in the West (1982), arguing that the dangers of corsets were exaggerated or even invented. Women, he claimed, wore corsets ...”

“... producing what it’s best at producing, and exporting that abroad. The writings of Adam Smith and David Ricardo are so influential in the trade world that most experts refuse even to discuss the merits of this basic laissez-faire assumption. The US, born out of a tax revolt in the same year that The Wealth of Nations was published, has long accepted it, and ...”

“... but there’s no indication that that is an informed opinion. Has he read (for example) David Marr’s Vision (1982)? Has he heard that there are honest-to-God theorems about the inference from one-dimensional retinal representations to representations of two-dimensional form; and from representations of two-dimensional form (and motion) to ...”

“... is passed to the Iraqis. A loyal secret police, says John Pike, a military expert in Washington, means ‘the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set.’ It will ‘reign but not rule’. Meanwhile, power will largely remain with what is now called the Coalition Provisional Authority, which, together with its ...”