“... is defined in reference to literature. However, as Lévy’s interview here with Claude Simon makes clear, in French cultural life today these are no longer competing, but simply different worlds: ‘the demise of the prophets’ after the Sixties also marks the end of a privileged connection between intellectuals and literature. This first became ...”

“... certain types of complex system. Historical contingency, too, has a role in the new synthesis. Simon Conway Morris has argued that if the Earth hadn’t been hit by the meteorite that probably made the dinosaurs extinct, the history of life would have been quite different. One of the most important recent insights, however, is that the capacity for ...”

“... the rivery smile to Paradiso XXX: a whole Commedia is being got through in a couple of tercets, so strong is the rush of feeling. The peculiarity is in the next line with its poetico-hearty diction: ‘How fine, I thought, this waking amongst men!’ Paterson has much more subtle ways of registering how language can seem to pull away from or do violence to ...”

“... all too clearly in need of reform, and the importance of the country being well led and militarily strong had been abundantly demonstrated. Cromwell’s achievements could therefore be praised and admired without any fear of his example being followed. Indeed, not only was Oliver not a threat to liberty, but he had, in the Whig view, been its safeguard. The ...”

“... practice. It is as if we had only the lyrics, without recordings or melodies, of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Joan Baez – and those only in indifferent Portuguese translations. Most of their power and all of their subtlety would vanish. For similar reasons, the troubadours have more often been honoured as cultural pioneers than admired as ...”

“... because the public were sick of the Tories, but because Whitehall and the City believed that a strong Labour Party was a better safeguard for Tory policies than a weak and divided Conservative Party. Having got their man, Whitehall and the City are now getting their policies, too. Under New Labour, Britain is becoming increasingly integrated into the ...”

“... signed and dated 1636. Francis stands in a dark space, looking ecstatically towards heaven. The strong side light gives him an uncanny presence. A second work, which belongs to the National Gallery and dates from around the same time, shows the saint meditating with a skull. The treatment of his habit, patched and torn from years of wear, is a masterclass ...”

“... and so on). Another feature of this perspective is its deeply ingrained provincialism. Hence the strong resistance to the logical case for including American politics within comparative politics. One could plausibly add two other, more specific factors. The first is the institutional history of the study of politics in the United States. One clear relic of ...”

“... that free will is bound up with freedom of movement. ‘It was not lack of desire, but desire too strong, too prickly, too fantastic. What the animal yearned after, when he gazed forlornly out of his cage, was the freedom to make love to Edwina of his own choice … to break into that domain which, in fact, he could not break out of.’ His speculations slip ...”

“... seedy and well-attested bit-parts and bystanders. It provides vivid portraits, for instance, of Simon Forman, the controversial astrologer-cum-gynaecologist whom Marie Mountjoy had consulted in 1597 (when she thought herself pregnant by a neighbouring mercer, Henry Wood), and of George Wilkins, the violent brothel-keeper-turned-author with whom Shakespeare ...”

“... Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (1985), co-authored with Simon Schaffer, and A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in 17th-Century England (1994). Those detailed, in what were historiographically innovative and sometimes epistemologically disruptive ways, the social and political conditions of the rise of ...”

“... gods. Attempting a Tempest/Macbeth double bill at the Kennedy Center, the 65-year-old protagonist, Simon Axler, ‘the last of the best of the classical American stage actors’, is suddenly abandoned by his talent. No reason is given – there is no reason – and Axler suffers a breakdown, aggravated by his inability to believe even in the sincerity of his ...”

“... Liberal Party of Herbert Asquith. Further schisms followed. The Liberal Nationals, under Sir John Simon, joined the National Government of 1931 and continued for the next thirty years co-operating closely with the Conservatives. Under the Woolton-Teviot Agreement of 1947 the Liberal Nationals changed their name, confusingly, to the National Liberals, and ...”

“... for the Tories, is now overwhelmingly Conservative. The party also won seats in towns with strong Labour traditions: Southampton, Plymouth, Derby and Bolton, for example. They are a little weaker in the North but not much. The Tories did well in Wales, where they won 11 seats, taking two from Labour and one from the Lib Dems – part of a process by ...”

“... The novel has had very bad reviews and quite a lot of publicity, the latter largely because Simon and Schuster first paid a great deal of money for it, then dropped it after some people who worked there objected to passages which described women being tortured and murdered. The chief technical problem facing Ellis was that of imagining a plausible ...”