“... Science does not customarily pose big questions. It poses small questions.’ It may seem odd to find such a statement in a book whose main questions have to do with Mind and the Cosmos, the twin mysteries of human existence, and whose answers are based upon current scientific understanding. The statement, however, embodies an important truth, upon which the entire book rests ...”

“... comedy of ordinary happiness where there appears to be all the time in the world. In Ariel nothing may have quite happened yet, but no aspiration seems implausible, whether it is Uncle Wheels’s ambition to win a national bike race, or Red Head’s to be a draughts champion. In Wheels’s case the family have already decided that he’s the victor, while Red ...”

“... Black Mischief, another old Chapman & Hall first, no dj, but handsome mottled brown boards.’ We may choose to believe Richard Rayner, as he presents himself to us raw: ‘Perhaps we all have this dream, to tell everything and yet not forfeit love – the only sinner not to be roasted.’ What he’s admitting to, though, is not a series of ...”

“... two are risks that Francophones must assess for themselves. Inside and outside Québec, a majority may come to feel that separation would clear the air and allow each of the ‘founding peoples’ to pursue their destiny unhindered. Once on its own, Québec might have to reconsider its linguistic ideals. Anglophones and allophones would be nervous about ...”

“... I was, of course, unaware that the play-let is an exquisite parody of Bergman’s Seventh Seal. I may have been a pretentious and culturally omnivorous adolescent, but it was exclusively the strength of Allen’s one-liners, and the precision of his comic timing, that fuelled my admiration. There can have been nothing more absurd to the audience of North ...”

“... in the Books of Maccabees. Jewish writers who composed scathing remarks about Greeks in general may have had in mind the political sins of Hellenistic rulers, the Seleucids chief among them. When Jews attacked idolatry they demonstrated no special concern over Greek forms of paganism. As Josephus remarked uneirenically in his apologia addressed to the Greek ...”

“... Greek world is a third world; if you want to know (say) about its infant mortality, UN statistics may supply a model. The Greek world is a Mediterranean world, and in many respects (nutrition, transport) the world of Philip II of Macedon will have borne a strong likeness to the world of Philip II of Spain; since Braudel had more material, he ...”

“... about 10 per cent longer than Hopman’s. As to the quality of the new translation two samples may illustrate how it stands to the old: Old: With each attempt to draw a sharp line of demarcation between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this borderline has receded further and further backwards. New: Each attempt made to date to clearly separate the ...”

“... one that month in Bury St Edmunds. He held another on 20 April in Lincoln, and three more in May, in Lichfield, Windsor and Eltham. He liked a tournament. His victory over France at Crécy two years earlier and England’s seizure of Calais were still fresh memories for him and the aristocratic chums who’d fought beside him. Now they replayed their ...”

“... times lower than the true number. The World Health Organisation is now involved and the reality may become apparent in the next few weeks. The initial lack of testing and lack of isolation of cases – denialism by the regime – is likely to lead to healthcare services being overwhelmed and tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths.Most democratic ...”

“... per cent of patients with Covid-19 require intensive care, and that a majority of people in the UK may ultimately be infected, there is an urgent need to create more ICU beds.Hospital wards can be divided roughly into intensive care units, high dependency units and general wards. Intensive care is used for the most seriously ill, in particular those who need ...”

“... more classically Arcadian in its subjects and atmosphere, more expansive in its distances. ‘You may walk in Claude’s pictures and count the miles,’ Wilson declared, but to my eye his management of distance is superior to Claude’s, more subtle in its tonal range and aerial perspective. barr01_3618 Gallery The relative qualities of the two painters ...”

“... Slime is also phenomenological, ‘a thing in between a feeling and a description’. We may agree that mucus and mayonnaise have the same viscosity, but disagree as to whether this makes my sandwich disgusting. Cultural differences show up clearly in food, but they hide in other areas too. Slimy things are everywhere, but there is no universal ...”

“... in a new guise, so that we are forced to recognise that there was a flaw in the goal itself. This may mean coming to see that democracy can itself be a form of un-freedom, or that we must demand more than merely political democracy: social and economic life must be democratised too. In short, what we first took as a failure fully to apply a noble principle ...”

“... century of national politics are in crisis; an astonishing YouGov poll conducted at the end of May put both Labour and the Conservatives on 19 per cent, behind the Liberal Democrats and Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. An Opinium poll subsequently put the Brexit Party out in front on 26 per cent. Farage’s outfit has adopted the model of a platform ...”