“... gaze was Homerically expansive, even taking in the claim, as the anthropologist Bettina Arnold describes it, that the ancient Greeks were actually Germans ‘who had survived a northern natural catastrophe and evolved a highly developed culture in southern contexts’ – a preposterous fantasy, but worth pursuing for archaeologists who coveted ...”

“... back and forth from being worldly to being world-weary. In the summer of 1881 he wrote to Matthew Arnold: ‘I have only now, too late perhaps, found out how all art requires solitude as its companion, only now indeed know the splendid difficulty of this great art in which you are a master illustrious and supreme.’ He enclosed his first book of poems. He ...”

“... waving cushions and towels, and some were leaning out. It happened that one of the firefighters, David Badillo, knew two of the uncles, Carlos and Manfred Ruiz, from the sports centre – they had all worked there as lifeguards – and Melanie gave Badillo her keys to their flat, 176 on the 20th floor. (They still hadn’t heard from Jessica.) Badillo went ...”