“... crimsons’ – part of the Customs compound which, 15 years later, became the classrooms where William Empson taught English during the Sino-Japanese War, encountering his own brigands outside the city walls (as described in the London Review of 5 October 1995). At Mengtze, wedlock all but crumbled. Stella fell out of love, my father into hurt ...”

“... present concerns, processes fragments of the past in roughly the same way that assorted blocks of white fish, bulked out with filler, are processed into fish fingers. Myths have a market; myth-busting has a small one; setting the historical Darwin in his Victorian intellectual and social context has practically none at all.Barry Werth’s Banquet at ...”

“... population growth’. The lead author of both the 2017 and 2019 reports, an ecologist named William Ripple, told Business Insider that ‘if an individual is concerned about climate change, three things to consider include: one, reducing the use of fossil fuels; two, eating mostly a plant-based diet; and three, having fewer ...”

“... many) don’t try to disguise their underlying assumption: that ‘civilisation’ is something white people do, and that conflict beyond ‘European’ borders is the natural state of things. ‘War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations,’ Daniel Hannan wrote in the Daily Telegraph. ‘They seem so like us. That is what ...”

“... the more thoroughly it is embedded in narrative detail, the more difficult it is to make black and white judgments. This approach to ethics might be contrasted with the rule-governed morality of utilitarianism and the categorical imperative of Kant, purportedly applicable in all places and at all times. We should not draw the line between virtue and rules too ...”

“... against the concealment and silence that the loss of Palestine had imposed, and that his father, William Said, had accepted, leaving behind not only the family’s past in Jerusalem but also his Arab name, Wadie. After 1967, Said embraced the Palestinian struggle – an act of ‘affiliation’, as he put it, a commitment based on belief, rather than ...”

“... doing so to ‘hear him out’. They knew, because everyone knew, what Yiannopoulos stood for – white nationalism, misogyny, xenophobia – and they wanted to give those politics a platform. That was perhaps their right. But it was also the right of their fellow students to call on them to think better of that morally questionable decision. Had a ...”

“... independence on the bank, which operates without any of the counterweights – Congress, the White House, the Treasury – that surround the Fed, embedding it in a political setting where it is publicly accountable. Unlike any other central bank, the independence of the ECB isn’t merely statutory, its rules or aims alterable by parliamentary ...”

“... France’s ambassador Jean-David Levitte – currently Sarkozy’s diplomatic adviser – gave the White House a green light for the war, provided it was on the basis of the first generic UN Resolution 1441, as Cheney wanted, without returning to the Security Council for the second explicit authorisation to attack that Blair wanted, which would force France to ...”

“... and Awe air campaign was launched at 9 p.m. local time the following day, involving, according to William Arkin of the Washington Post, 1700 aircraft flying 830 strike sorties plus 505 cruise missiles attacking 1500 aimpoints at several hundred targets: palaces, homes, guard headquarters, government buildings, military bases. More targets were attacked in ...”

“... Reiner Stach. Proust, expiring at 51, got just under a thousand apiece from Jean-Yves Tadié and William Carter; Joyce, at 59, eight hundred from Richard Ellmann. Moving down the scale to medium or lightweights, there is little reduction in size. If we confine ourselves to Britain, Martin Stannard produced a thousand pages on Evelyn Waugh, who died when he ...”