“... de foie to the sound of trumpets’ – is investigated by Alan Bell with the finding that it may have referred to someone else: but it is hard to detach it from the miser’s greedy son. His appearance was described by one woman in words that would not have disgraced a sally of his own: ‘a mouth like an oyster, and three double chins. I did not hear ...”

“... a chilly forehead and a warm thigh, or St Simeon, being written by the tip of his stylus? You may prefer Marguerite Porete, burning alive with her book, or the rich black intersection of St John of the Cross or the pyroclastic whisper of Anonymous, Unknown Author. Or something a little closer to home – Jeannie, for instance, the family friend whom my ...”

“... order to demonstrate that I have not inadvertently farted. The secretary looks up inquiringly. She may just be thinking I am uncomfortable. She may, on the other hand, be thinking I have farted, and not once but three times. I am attending a funeral. It is crowded with mourners, many of them friends and acquaintances. I do ...”

“... of something that cannot be justified in words any more than can the rules of grammar which may be responsible for the appearance of tame conformism in so much of the literature on the subject quoted by the authors. One is reminded of the splendid chapter in Samuel Butler’s Erewhon describing the ‘Musical Banks’ which demand and exact ...”

“... for two astonishing months, seemed to promise the country reconstruction and renewal. When, in May, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces launched an assault on the northern Jaffna peninsula, which had for two years been almost entirely controlled by the main Tamil militant organisation, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE), nobody could have foreseen ...”

“... produce appropriate outputs towards motor centres. The first response to the sound ‘Hullo’ may be a sharpening of attention and then, if it is repeated, perhaps a pattern of motor activity by the larynx and muscles of the throat that sends the response ‘Yes – is that you, James?’ There are evidently some gaps in the physiological story, but they ...”

“... here the bombing is terrible. I hope the same thing never comes to Glasgow. Tell Annie, Jeannie, May, Katie and them all I was asking for them. I hope you and the kids are keeping well I will be here for some time yet. I will draw to a close sending you and the kids my best love. Michael A thin strip of darkness, the U-boat U.99, commanded by the ...”

“... zookeeper. Aspinall’s notoriously lethal zoos have done their bit for the scheme, but the latter may not be achievable within liberalism as we know it. This turn, unlikely as it is to land Gray a job with the Bush Administration, at least rebuts the charge of time-serving. In any case, he has been sufficiently wayward, and rude about other theorists, to ...”

“... next moves. Teenagers riot and loot in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. Theresa May invites Jeremy Corbyn to Downing Street to do a deal. ‘Take back control.’ Strivers v. shirkers. The Red Wall. Eat Out to Help Out. ‘In the UK illegally? GO HOME OR FACE ARREST.’ The Bank of England prints another hundred billion pounds. Nick ...”

“... we prefer: what is surprising is that we could ever believe in prejudice-free inquiry. We may call the science we like good science, but scientific methods and scientific findings can’t easily disentangle themselves from the various uses to which they may be put – think of the harm scientific research has done ...”

“... less, as well as if a promontory were.’ But even if the whole feels the loss of a part, the part may not feel the loss of the whole. It is what happens to the clod or the promontory that counts, and in his earlier poem about metempsychosis, ‘The Progress of the Soul’, Donne describes the soul entering a whale so vast that it is as if ‘seas from ...”

“... When Luis Miguel Dominguín, the celebrated torero, died at the age of 69 in May 1996, the obituaries were many and generous. They recalled his curious relationship with Ernest Hemingway, his love affairs with the likes of Ava Gardner, and that he was the father of the famous singer Miguel Bosé. They made much of his close friendship with Picasso, and Le Monde quoted from his brief work of 1960, Pour Pablo ...”

“... The researchers are usually on-site for no more than an hour or two a day. Contract researchers may not do much intellectual work, but this doesn’t mean they are not well paid. A part-time contract researcher conducting four or five clinical trials a year can earn an average of $300,000 in extra income. In 2000, a full-time clinical trial site earned an ...”

“... of the hotel worker Baha Mousa in September 2003, and another into incidents that occurred in May 2004 at a British army base north of Basra, while a third inquiry has been requested on behalf of 102 other Iraqi citizens. Since Cameron’s announcement WikiLeaks has suggested that there may well be 15,000 hitherto ...”

“... noted, Pyongyang’s diplomats have played a strikingly weak hand with remarkable skill. It may be the country that nobody loves, but it has confounded the predictions of its enemies. Perhaps the first thing we should know about North Korea is that much of what we think we know is wrong, and the rest, at best, is incomplete. North Korea, as Bruce ...”