“... contributed to the war effort against German Zeppelins by developing a powerful arc lamp. Anderson may (or may not) manage the biography: he certainly cannot manage his wife, Cressida, nor does he feel much for his own six-year-old daughter, Mary Rose. Cressida and Mary Rose live away from him, out of London, in the ...”

“... Shattuck makes use of this and other material in an absorbing retelling of the story. The book may be a bit disappointing to any-one seeking an understanding of Victor in the context of modern psychological research. It is a pity, in my view, that the principal influences upon Shattuck seem to derive from psychoanalysis, the contribution of which to this ...”

“... and its subsequent TV sale, is made, the producer’s most important job is often over: the rest may as well be public relations. Do you wonder that faced with the prospect of a dangerous and uncertain career in gangland, many crooks opt instead for the easier life in Hollywood? Of course, there are exceptions: honourable producers, good men whose hair no ...”

“... and ‘warmonger’, and to avoid at all costs discussion of his own record in office. It may yet pay off – those Georgians are adept above all at winning elections – but I fear the President’s re-election would be at the price of his ability to govern. His only remaining political asset, the belief that he is a decent, honest man of some moral ...”

“... on how Darwinism dignifies the variant or abnormal: a familiar element in the theory which one may neglect to notice as one of its central, revolutionary tendencies.) But two pages earlier we hear that ‘Darwinian theory will not resolve to a single significance nor yield a single pattern. It is essentially multivalent.’ While there is no strict ...”

“... Quotations from writers like Byron, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Emerson, Oscar Wilde, Louisa May Alcott, Turgenev and Tolstoy (lots of Tolstoy – no one has written more memorably about balls) precede each section and raise the intellectual tone. The format is coffee table and the style olden days: the text is printed in double columns on cream-coloured ...”

“... as understood by Johnson, Farage and co. is a travesty of the possible. As a cultural project it may yet find a political vehicle (which could be Johnson’s Tory Party or Farage’s Brexit Party) but as a strictly political one it cannot be delivered in its pure form and cannot be agreed on: so it has created administrative, procedural, legal gridlock. The ...”

“... conversations – but by Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian, three pranksters who may or may not have ever visited a Hooters but who became internet famous, and soon afterwards New York Times famous, for their comprehensive ridiculing of the standards of editing and peer review at Sex Roles and a whole set ...”

“... into prayer rooms, throwing around Qurans, and never apologising for the damage or intrusion. It may be significant that, according to a recent survey, in the 2015 regional elections 51 per cent of the police and the military voted for the National Front. No need, then, to mobilise conspiracy theories to link ideology and practices. The selective application ...”

“... The publishers describe this book as ‘lean’, which may be taken to refer to its style, though it also serves as a euphemism for ‘very short, especially considering the price’. Its immediate predecessor was Underworld, about seven times as long (or as fat). That book, as nearly everybody must know, begins with a chapter about a famous baseball game and a boy who retrieves the ball with which the decisive home run was scored ...”

“... something) one is protecting someone (or something) else. And that someone or something else may be – in fact is likely to be – of real value. When E.M. Forster said that he hoped he would have the courage to betray his country rather than his friend he was drawing our attention to the question of value, of what betrayal can protect. So we have to ...”

“... is everywhere. It’s more difficult to place Eggers as a writer. However well received his work may be – and reviews have generally been kind – his writing often feels like a side project among many other highly successful side projects. His books fall into the cracks between genres; they’re brought out in different editions by different ...”

“... applied). After reading Barbara Freese’s book, you get the feeling that vigorous punishments may again be inflicted on coal-burners, for their impact on both human and planetary health is becoming dire. Freese is the assistant attorney general for the state of Minnesota, and spent 12 years prosecuting companies for the damage they do to public ...”

“... to a dispute agreeing that it is to be privately determined by some other code of law, which may be a religious one. A good many religious organisations and sects require this of their members, and a good many more permit or encourage it. This is not to say that private arbitration within religious communities is without problems, as the archbishop might ...”

“... trigger Article 50 without parliamentary approval have been much discussed, but the EU referendum may well have another, more serious effect on the constitution. The UK’s membership of European organisations radically changed its constitution. For more than forty years domestic courts have interpreted Acts of Parliament in the light of EU ...”