“... pregnant opening – ‘12 June. I’ve never known such a summer. A sultry heatwave since mid-May. All day a thick cloud of dust hangs unmoving over streets and market-places’ – reminds me irresistibly of another great beginning: ‘Ganz Europa leidet gegenwärtig unter dieser Hitze’ (‘All Europe is currently suffering in this heatwave’), from ...”

“... August, the Labour Party’s spokesman on home affairs, John Fraser, wrote to the home secretary, Robert Carr, about the cases. The Sunday Times report on Fraser’s letter said that he had asked Carr ‘to pay special regard to the method of proof used by transport police’ and the lack of ‘independent witnesses’. According to the article, Ridgewell was ...”

“... it’s ‘a product without a single fault, available at the lowest price possible’. Some may scoff, but it turned out to be a shrewd investment, since it is now sold out, and used copies are changing hands on eBay for larger sums. There is also an accompanying set of postcards, ‘Highlights in the History of The Invisible Book’, which includes ...”

“... Even her portraits gave her a Caucasian makeover, airbrushing racial distinctiveness – she may have had facial tattoos – to make her conform to English expectations. Her cultural rebirth was not so much a gesture of accord between Britain and the Indigenous people of Virginia as a symbol of conquest and dominion over the American wilderness and its ...”

“... Germany with ‘Arab roots’ to disavow hatred of Jews and denounce Hamas. The vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, followed with a more explicit warning to Muslims: they would be tolerated in Germany only if they rejected antisemitism. Aiwanger, a politician with a weakness for Nazi salutes, has joined the chorus blaming antisemitism in Germany on ‘unchecked ...”

“... of the competitiveness of his profession and of any infections of aggressive masculinity he may have picked up from reading Emerson or the ever-devious Hawthorne. His contentions are that in the North-Eastern United States before the Civil War ‘the reigning ideology of manhood oriented itself toward power, not feeling’ – such dichotomies ...”

“... The ghettoisation and sub-sequent deportation of Salonika’s Jews took place between February and May 1943, with one last train in August. What Waldheim knew or didn’t know is impossible to prove, but he wasn’t there. The French journalists did hit upon one interesting story that I had not seen published outside Austria before, which has to do with how ...”

“... or less unique.’ Hamsun could be as bewilderingly stochastic in person as his characters were. Robert Ferguson, his intelligent biographer, tells a story of Hamsun visiting a hotel in Nice. Barking at staff in Norwegian and refusing to tip, he was quickly the most unpopular guest in the hotel. Then at the end of his stay, he delighted everyone by ...”

“... more than three times higher than that of the best of its human opponents. ‘Quiz-show contestant may be the first job made redundant by Watson,’ one of the vanquished men said, ‘but I’m sure it won’t be the last.’ Watson’s achievement is a sign of how much progress has been made in machine learning, the process by which computer algorithms ...”

“... which was ultimately, if not immediately, grounded in the supernatural. These may be the dichotomies one takes for granted, reinforced as they so often are with a wealth of anecdote. ‘Theology and Parsondom’ were, for T.H. Huxley, ‘the natural and irreconcilable enemies of science’. His professional rival Richard Owen, by ...”

“... Why … are people prepared to lay down their lives for their country?’ Some of the answers may lie in the enabling detachment of kinship emotion from its original sources. Such feelings can be strengthened, even as they are diffused or redeployed. Because this kind of siblinghood is ‘metaphorical’, it doesn’t follow that it’s weaker, or watered ...”

“... No Secrets, and Says He’ll Prove It’ – so ran the main headline in the New York Times on 18 May. The subject was Donald Trump’s supposed revelation of foreign intelligence assets when he met with Russian officials in the Oval Office. It isn’t yet clear if anything dangerous was done, but the US media were showcasing their heavy artillery with a leak ...”

“... become a city’s icon – Big Ben, Miss Liberty and the Eiffel Tower date from the 19th – and may well rank with Hagia Sophia and the Taj Mahal as our era’s legacy to the ages. How did an easy-going metropolis, not noted even in Australia for elegance or charm, manage to snare this rare beauty? Come to think of it, where are its successors? Why are most ...”

“... he relies on comes from income-tax returns: ‘The totals for London and the Home Counties may be taken as convenient shorthand or metaphors for commercial and financial-based incomes generated by the British middle classes, while the totals for Lancashire and Yorkshire may be taken as their equivalent for industrial ...”