“... and piously to expand upon it. After listening to Judge Cantley’s summing-up, some, he says, ‘may have wondered how such a conspiracy could ever be proved against a man in public life. But then the tremendous respect and deference we all feel towards men in public life may make it hard for us to believe that any such ...”

“... programmes have demonstrated, even a skilful web of visual aids and journalistic conceits may not succeed in establishing a connection between specialist and general knowledge of atoms, particles, forces and fields. Some masters of high science have become sceptical of any possibility of popularising their subject without making a mere caricature of ...”

“... and to risk missing both. Historians of science, who will be impressed by the annotation, may wonder why the text presents only a partial history of the subject. Other readers, welcoming the text as an entertaining and erudite essay on a topic of mesmeric appeal, may wonder why they are obliged to purchase a pound ...”

“... shown some embarrassment but have not, so far as I know, gone to such lengths. And however rum it may appear, the prize, if you look at the way it is set up, is unlikely to go to the kind of author businessmen feel they should own a piece of. The list of winners to date indicates that on the whole it is the moderate sellers, writers who are not exactly ...”

“... was born in 1900, and died in 1983. There can be argument over the exact date of its death. Some may maintain that it did not die until about 1990, others that electorally it died in 1980 or even earlier. There will be similar controversy over the role of Michael Foot: did he lead it to its death or did he just accompany it? Was he one of the physicians who ...”

“... into the new picture gallery at Dulwich and straight to the ‘Cuyp next the door’. ‘You may lay your finger on the canvas; but miles of dewy vapour and sunshine are between you and the objects you survey.’ To think of doing this is to realise that more than ‘deception’ is involved. We know it is a flat canvas and yet are happy to ...”

“... world is instead part of a vast game played by no fixed rules. The continuity between our cultures may thus hinder a proper appreciation of Greek science. The solution, Lloyd proposes, is for the history of Greek science to be carried out only in the context of careful comparison with other societies’ science: not in order to show how one is superior but to ...”

“... to death. The 415 pages of this anthology won’t kill you – nor will you go blind – but you may from time to time feel queasy. An anthology of sex is something of a bathhouse, back-alley enterprise. Here are passages without antecedent or consequence, brief, sometimes anonymous; sometimes gratifying enough, in a casual sort of way. Writing about sex is ...”

“... the damage done to the body by toxic chemicals. If she is right, something of a global holocaust may await us. Not only have entire animal populations been wiped out by becoming unable to reproduce: a whole series of disturbing biological defects is already observable among humans and these are likely to become more and more damaging in the near-future. Theo ...”

“... Croisset, 15-16 May 1852. Saturday-Sunday, 1 a.m.The small hours of Sunday morning find me in the middle of a page that has taken me all day and is still far from finished. I am putting it aside to write to you, and in fact it may perhaps take me into tomorrow evening, since I often spend several hours looking for a word, and since I have several to find, it is quite likely that you would still be waiting all next week if I were to wait until I had finished ...”

“... is a chilling absurdity’. This chilling absurdity is followed by more of the same. It may be unreasonable to expect books about heroic authors to be heroic, or books about deeply funny authors to be deeply funny, but if any heroics or any jokes occur they should at least be intended. Allowing for a slightly surprising tendency on the part of Amis ...”

“... the forces of order and control – not only the police but also the CRS (one of the slogans of May 1968 was ‘CRS-SS’), the secret service and the entire state security apparatus. There is no place for Snowden or Manning in this new universe. ‘Resentment against the police is no longer what it was, except among poor youth of Arab or African ...”

“... public that watching porn is something lots of adults like to do. (It’s hard to imagine Theresa May gearing up to speak on the matter. Or Philip Hammond. Boris Johnson perhaps, but he’s off the pitch.) And yet the craftier Tories, if any still exist, may see this as an advantage: the party can adopt its ...”

“... In May​ 2014, the bodies of two teenage girls were found hanging from the branches of an old mango tree in the Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh. The nooses had been fashioned from their own dupattas. Relatives and neighbours from nearby villages came to the orchard in solidarity and mourning. The police arrived, but the families refused to let them cut the bodies down ...”

“... was produced.’ O my America!Mr Osborne’s accounts exhibit a certain Schadenfreude, which may or may not contribute to the sense of desolation imparted by the second half of the book. The later stories suggest that Auden’s life became ever more of a performance; some of them suggest a show (and more than a ...”