“... of the English Commonwealth and, later, the Nazis and, later still, Prince Charles have all held up that curious Renaissance iconoclast Paracelsus as the patron of alternative medicine. The idea that all disease was in essence spiritual represented an alternative to élitist institutions such as the Royal College of Physicians – ‘I am not ashamed to ...”

“... to outshine his American counterparts. I still find this shocking, having grown up with Montgomery held up as what these days would be called a role model. True, he soon became a figure of fun, easily imitated and with his public school ethic ripe for parody. But to find that after Alamein he was living on his reputation, and bent on enhancing it, is still ...”

“... as a matter of measurable IQ, regarded as an innate and fixed quality – a notion that was held in greater esteem in the 1950s than it is now. In Young’s dystopian satire (it’s striking how often both its satirical and dystopian aspects are now overlooked), life has become an enlarged version of the eleven-plus. Those who are ‘clever’ go on to ...”

“... bookshop in Paris, Berlin or Madrid stocked with translations of Baldwin, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, David Graeber and other messengers from an alternative American future.We are​ very far from that future. Instead Trump and company seem bent on returning to 19th-century gunboat diplomacy, invoking the threat of ‘narco-terrorism’ to justify acts of ...”

“... by a family of Dutch chocolatiers, the van Houtens. Up to that point chocolate makers had been held back by the properties of the cocoa bean, which produced a mixture of cocoa solids and oily cocoa butter. Because it was hard to separate them, drinking chocolate tended to be greasy, heavily cut with potato flour or sago (or lichen) to sop the butter ...”

“... to mislead these people: what was on offer was not a ‘humanitarian war’ but an informal Camp David. ‘It needn’t even be the United States,’ he continued. ‘It could be a great man. It could be Nelson Mandela … or Bill Clinton.’The beards were unimpressed. One of the few beardless men in the audience rose to his feet and addressed the ...”

“... rise in the price of fuel could kill many of them off.’Before leaving I had rung a pig farmer, David Barker, whose farm is north of Stowmarket in Suffolk. Barker is 50 years old. His family has been farming pigs in Suffolk for four generations; they have lived and worked on the present farm since 1957. He owns 1250 acres and 110 sows, which he breeds and ...”

“... suffering.The BBC launched its Darwin season with Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, and what David Attenborough wanted us to understand was that ‘Darwin has shown us that we are not apart from the natural world – we do not have dominion over it. We are subject to its laws and processes, as are all other animals on earth to which indeed we are ...”

“... as the valet’s perspective on the future of the continent. Thomas Meaney GreeceTwo years ago, David Cameron saw himself out of office, respecting the result of the referendum he had unwisely called. For three years now, Alexis Tsipras has clung to power in Athens by disrespecting the results of his own referendum. The Eurozone’s one-time guerrilla ...”

“... after four o’clock in the evening, Warren found herself trapped at home. A family conference was held and it was decided she should move to the market town of Lutterworth. In 2011 she was installed in a neat modern bungalow in a town where everybody knew her, with shops and its own cottage hospital and her family nearby: the community ideal. In 2014, her ...”

“... tapering sides marked with corrugated rings, like a rocket engine scratched from the final cut of David Lynch’s Dune. The concert was at the top, and in order to get to it I passed through an exhibition of art created since the invasion, Ty Yak? How Are You? One of the curators, the artist Katya Libkind, had left a comment on the walls: ‘Basically it’s ...”

“... nuzzling into his hairy chest, squeezing myself tight up against his beating heart. I adored being held in his arms and feeling his big hands stroking me. Stroking me where? Everywhere, I think. I took in his physical affection like draughts of delicious drink. I don’t ever recall feeling anything but safe and loved in this private midnight comforting.There ...”