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“... cursed with a chronic liver condition. He died in 1930 at the age of 26. For someone who died so young, his list of achievements is nothing short of amazing. In pure mathematics, he is famous for two theorems about combinations which now form the starting-point for what is known as ‘Ramsey Theory’; in economics, he is acknowledged as providing the ...”

“... peasant who, having stumbled on political power, is unsure how to wield it. Reporting on Michael Portillo’s visit as defence minister to Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Macedonia in 1996, Anne Applebaum (coincidentally, for the Evening Standard) has a good old chuckle: Up and down the red carpets he walks, Her Majesty’s aircraft just behind ...”

“... Perhaps the real test of an anthology is whether it convincingly brings fresh material forward. Michael Harper, Dave Smith, Albert Goldbarth: Vendler takes risks at the Contemporary end of her Book, and mostly carries them off. Though one looks in vain for Hass or Dulpen, there is much to please, including a clutch of decorously unfeminist women. Louise ...”

“... may be yet. The closest parallels to Aids in epidemiological terms are syphilis and Hepatitis B. Michael Adler, in Aids and the Epidemics of History, lists the sudden appearance of syphilis (at the end of the 15th century), its asymptomatic carrier state and predominantly sexual means of transmission as the chief points of similarity. Hepatitis B, as Baruch ...”

“... from Covid-19 are older people, the lockdown is an intolerable encroachment on the liberty of the young. A more serious argument might ask where the limits of acceptable risk lie, or might consider – in a pandemic future – whether mass medical surveillance by the state, from automated temperature readings to contagion tracing by phone tracking, is worth ...”

“... in 1951 included Henry Reed, Lawrence Durrell. Christopher Fry, C. Day Lewis, Lennox Berkeley, Michael Tippett, William Walton, Laurie Lee and Stevie Smith. Until the early Fifties the BBC appeared to get a good return from its policy of patronising highbrow talent. From the inauguration of the Italia Prize in 1949, until 1955, of 15 entries chosen as the ...”

“... as it runs the risk of exposing the criminality of the state. ‘Criminalisation by the state,’ Michael Grewcock writes, with reference to equally dire migrant policies in Australia, ‘is integral to legitimising criminal activity by the state.’ The political philosopher Howard Caygill goes so far as to argue that violence at the borders of the modern ...”

“... that I know many felt at being involved in futile wars, badly run and heartbreakingly wasteful in young lives and treasure’. Another officer, still serving, recalled the ‘cognitive dissonance in London’ at the time of the Iraq denouement in 2008: ‘The refusal on the part of senior officers and officials even to admit that we had been found wanting and ...”

“... myself I’m Gay Talese again.’ ‘The ones who come and go’, in James’s telling, include a young woman called Nina Burgess, who’s had a one night stand with Marley; Barry Diflorio, a CIA man; and Alex. The rest are gangsters, and the bigger picture they open up is a view from the ground of the working relationship between organised crime and Jamaican ...”

“... bonanza. The soft-spoken Californian rodent was attended by his sleepover pal and minder, Michael Jackson. We have heard it stated, quite accurately, that construction work on the Olympic Park has been carried out with few casualties. But cycle deaths are mounting, from the early casualties of the fresh-painted lanes at the base of the Bow ...”

“... a yet higher level. Should we then be either surprised or morally self-assured at the photos of young men and women in uniform leering at or torturing naked prisoners in an overcrowded prison in Iraq? As more and more evidence comes out of similar episodes in Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Mosul, Basra and so on, it does begin to be clear that abusive ...”

“... for clemency awaited his decision. Among the applicants, it is reported, were Conrad Black; Michael Milken, of junk bond fame; John Walker Lindh, the ‘American Taliban’; a former Republican congressman jailed for accepting bribes; and a former Democratic governor of Louisiana, convicted on racketeering charges. They were doomed to ...”

“... to hate him, to see him as a child-killing monster, but instead I found a rattled, frightened young man, short, slight, and so pale that the bluish veins on his neck and shoulders were visible.’ After a long bourbon-soaked conversation, Calley interrupted Hersh’s questioning to phone the man who had been his immediate superior in Vietnam, Captain ...”

“... to look at the series of British actions leading up to the massacre, in particular those of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the lieutenant governor of the Punjab. Unlike Dyer, O’Dwyer could not be said to be a stupid man; he had a first in jurisprudence from Balliol. But like several clever men who went out to India – Virginia Woolf’s uncle James Fitzjames ...”

“... her as aggressive and confrontational. Her brother saw this as ‘casual racism’: when a young black woman was ‘emotional and upset’ this was interpreted as threatening behaviour.Ahmed’s death led the coroner to issue a prevention of future deaths notice to the DWP; so did Carré’s death. Recipients are legally obliged to act to prevent ...”