“... weather is not clear, but no matter). Some of the information in the book, as the author admits, may be useful for settling bets in pubs. A chapter on weather lore contains all the old saws one could possibly want, and more. It is odd that, when the writers of old guidebooks so often talked about seaside airs being ‘elastic’, there was never a jingle on ...”

“... longer period. Godley’s use of charts (see, for instance, the papers dated 11 January and 17 May 1991) will readily convey to the non-specialist reader in how spectacular a manner this performance was worse in almost every respect than in earlier periods: the growth rate exceptionally low, the rise in unemployment exceptionally rapid, the amplitude of ...”

“... exercised him over more than three decades. This said, the way in which he has chosen to do it may deter readers who are not, and have no wish to be, versed in backward-looking disputes between rival commentators over well-worn texts. Why, such readers may ask, does Professor Lockwood not go straight to his own answers ...”

“... to the public of what that strategy might be. The DGSE could try to suborn another member of May’s team to provide corroboration, but this is risky and could expose both the DGSE and their contact. At the heart of this game of betrayal is trust: the source of the intelligence must be trusted by his or her handler. The reader of the intelligence report ...”

“... Chilean political establishment. The discredit of the main political parties carried over into the May 2021 elections for the Constitutional Convention. The People’s List, a loose coalition of independents, finished third with 16 per cent of the vote, ahead of the main centre-left alliance and only narrowly behind the left-wing bloc formed by Gabriel ...”

“... Cooper could not escape the paradox Hughes-Hallett so neatly exposes: that the myth of Cleopatra may offer women an image of power, but at the cost of implicating them in the misogynistic fantasies of patriarchy. For women, ‘Cleopatra’ is a trap. The real hero of the story of Cleopatra is, of course, the snake. Hughes-Hallett (in a rare lapse from her ...”

“... to provide a safe service for patients. Empty shifts are covered either by agency workers, who may be unfamiliar with the hospital, or by doctors who feel pressured into working extra shifts (and in doing so break their contractual maximum of 72 hours a week). Too often shifts are left unfilled, even for extended periods such as maternity leave, making it ...”

“... Note that the quality Johnson’s fans most applaud in him is cheerfulness, something Theresa May was never going to offer, suggesting that she may have missed the point of Brexit all along. The summer has taken on a carnivalesque quality; normal constraints around public speech have been suspended for the duration of a ...”

“... Even older fossils have been recovered, including bones of exotic relatives of the giraffe which may date from twenty million years ago. Then there are giant hyenas, as well as bears, hippos and rhinoceroses. Greece and its islands in fact lay at a kind of crossroads for mammal evolution over millions of years, the evidence of which is entombed in the rock ...”

“... on an island off the Welsh coast. Here writers live in a community paid for by a trust. They may write, they may not. They may find, or they may destroy, themselves. Each is obliged to undertake seven Main Events, a kind of DIY ordeal, under the ...”

“... Students of the life and works of Walter Scott and James Hogg may have glimpsed the shadowy, not to say meteoric, not to say dubious presence of the publisher John Macrone, and learned of his prompt desire, after Scott’s death in September 1832, to write his Life, basing it to a large extent on rural informants ...”

“... progress of the African continent. The wish for Africans to understand the ‘dignity of labour’ may look ironic, but it meant that British industrialists were keen to take action to end their dependence on slavery, a dependence which by that time had lasted nearly two centuries. Higgs’s Chocolate Islands relates William Cadbury’s efforts to find out ...”

“... a preliminary to invasion. Sovereignty does not come in platonic form, however stridently a state may assert its own or purport to acknowledge others’. What these two books are about is the other major awakening from the Platonic dream: the state which actually decides to part with some of its sovereign powers. Neil MacCormick, a distinguished ...”

“... averting her daughter’s expulsion. The exact motive for Lena’s arson is unknown, although it may be a protest at her husband Bob’s recent and untimely death. Understanding the importance of making a good impression, Ella brings a ‘strategic’ box of See’s candy for Mrs Lowenstein and wears a pair of bone-coloured Italian leather ...”

“... news. (Their first response was to get down on their knees; if praying does nothing for you, there may be safety, or at least reassurance, or the illusion of control, in numbers: I’ve been glued to the list of earthquakes on the website and Twitter feed of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, @INGVterremoti.) A video of nuns running to ...”