“... of the country – the PSI opted for a common Socialist-Communist list with the PCI, against the Christian-Democratic Party backed by the Vatican and the CIA. Timpanaro was among the socialist youth who opposed this decision, regarding the PCI leadership as little better than a lay version of the Holy Office, and in despair wrote a parody of the PSI Congress ...”

“... tree records only that she was alive at the time of the 1901 census. Her brothers were all good Christian men: one was ordained in the Church of England; another was a Unitarian deacon. I’m sure they all thought her plight, when they thought about her at all, terribly sad; but I doubt it ever crossed any of their minds that what they’d done to her might ...”

“... am suspicious of, the possession theory. This story goes that the addict is like any other poor Christian, but he’s been taken by the devil. His addiction is not something he could choose (after all, it certainly isn’t something he would choose), and therefore he can’t be blamed for it. Unsurprisingly, some finessing of the notion of blame often takes ...”

“... lovers into birds; a terrifying encounter with the mummified effigy of King Solomon and his magic ring, guarded by giant serpents; a descent into the underworld; a young lover who sits disconsolate after the death of his beloved from a snake bite. Kilito has often returned to The Arabian Nights in fine-grained studies with a quixotic approach to imagery and ...”

“... greater numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan, per capita, than recruits from any US state, according to Christian Science Monitor, which reported in 2010 that Micronesia had ‘lost soldiers at a rate five times the US average’.Photographs of ten of the dead hang on the wall of the arrivals lounge at Pohnpei Airport, where Kukulunn Galen, a representative from ...”

“... met regularly to discuss his progress. A ‘pastor’ from SPAC Nation, an evangelical Christian church that runs programmes to draw adolescents away from crime and violence, gave him a place in a house the church owns in the suburbs of south-east London. Thapar has misgivings about SPAC Nation – it has been accused of financially exploiting its ...”

“... old days. Erasmus was a keen observer who dispels illusions. This humanist dawn was no period of Christian love, of sweetly singing choirs (Erasmus loathed English Church music, anyway), or of healthy green lands in an ecologist’s dream. In his efforts to spread a scholarly Gospel, Erasmus met hostility and underwent much suffering. The Latin ...”

“... The words too whosesoever. What room for worse! How almost true they sometimes almost ring! How wanting in inanity! Say the night is young alas and take heart. Or better worse say still a watch of night alas to come. A rest of last watch to come. And take heart. It would be a great pity if, nowadays, Beckett had become more celebrated than ...”

“... for Kate, the unrequited love of his life, who died of the sweating sickness and whose mourning ring he wears. He sees her in every woman he meets and likes, all of whom he assumes are repelled by his deformity. Shardlake’s first sidekick, Mark Poer, is twittish, something of a Lord Percy to his Blackadder, but represents both the son he’ll never have ...”

“... heroism. The only ‘female being’ the boy knows is his dog Immacolatella, a name recalling the Christian tradition of pious and devoted femininity. The dog is as besotted with her master as Arturo is with his father, or as the Amalfitano was with the young Wilhelm. Morante exposes but also seems to take pleasure in capturing the misogyny and machismo of ...”

“... mobile young London physician ‘to make all the Noise and Bustle you can, to make the whole Town ring of you if possible: So that every one in it may know, that there is in Being, and here in Town too, such a Physician’. One way to make such a noise was to be seen in the fastest and most fashionable medical and literary circles, hoping for a reflected ...”

“... dramatic way. To the end of his days, he had no idea who his father was. Erikson’s name may now ring a bell for very few people, and even they may be surprised to realise that he died only a few years ago. He had by then had a long, long life; his period of renown as psychologist, author and sage could be said to have begun in the mid-1950s, when his book ...”

“... humanist thinking, or as an indictment of social injustice; others have argued over its possible Christian or (less persuasively) communist undertones. What can be said for sure is that it ensnares the reader in skeins of dissimulation, irony, literary brilliance and unanswerable questions. The character of Morus was presumably intended to evoke More ...”

“... of public behaviour and the personalities of public people arise in great part from the ‘Judaeo-Christian attack against Roman standards of public glory’. In this opposition, to seek or confer fame is either an appropriate manifestation of public valour and dignity, or a self-violation and affront to our true inner worth; either civic virtue, due ...”

“... there. I recall it as a leafy, slow-paced and prosperous town of free-standing villas, largely Christian in population, served by a well-known Friends High School. Today it is the West Bank capital of the Palestinian Authority set up under Yasser Arafat as a direct result of the Israeli-PLO negotiations. Most of its ...”