“... final whistle blows it is possible for everyone to discover they have lost. On the morning of 7 May it was hard for any of the party leaders to avoid feeling that they had received the cold shoulder. There was a delightful, unnerving symmetry about it; each side had received just enough votes and seats to let them have a sniff of power, but not enough votes ...”

“... did serious damage to Russia’s interests: ‘The Bolsheviks, for a number of reasons – may God judge them – added large sections of the historical south of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine. This was done with no consideration for the ethnic make-up of the population, and today these areas form the south-east of Ukraine.’ No wonder Stalin’s ...”

“... in Iraq and 2487 in Syria. But the campaign has demonstrably failed to contain IS, which in May captured Ramadi in Iraq and Palmyra in Syria. There have been far fewer attacks against the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, Jabhat al-Nusra, and the extreme Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, which between them dominate the insurgency in northern Syria. The US failure ...”

“... was the absence of testimony by agents. Yet written materials of sufficient quantity and authority may have a credibility that only the most reliable of witnesses could claim. The committee staff reviewed more than six million pages of CIA documents, while also drawing on an earlier CIA inspector general’s report. A wrangle over agency requests for ...”

“... were mostly women, dressed in jeans and T-shirts. With a big smile and the male chauvinism that may always be part of the culture of car manufacturing, my guide, from the all-powerful works council, said I was looking at the ‘Wolfsburg marriage market’: ‘The lads drop by here when they have a break to see what’s on offer.’ Many of the changes were ...”

“... leave France as the only member of the EU capable of deploying significant military power. Merkel may well be right in saying, as she did recently, that Europe can no longer rely on the US for military protection. But Europe cannot protect itself when Germany has only four serviceable military planes and at the end of last year hadn’t a single operational ...”

“... of what happens ‘where the lyrical I goes to the objects to caress them with language’. There may be charm in such work, he says, but it will necessarily ‘lack … the greatness of true downfalls’. He is not thinking specifically about Auschwitz, but the connection is easily made. A great deal of lyric poetry, especially of the civilised-barbaric ...”

“... by the restored Bourbons. Although now incorporated within a much larger museum complex, it may claim to be the earliest, as well as the most spectacular, surviving museum devoted to the art of the Middle Ages. Hill, however, concentrates her attention on Normandy, which was of special interest to British as well as French antiquaries. In the early ...”

“... My​ last visit to Gaza had been in May 2014, just before Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, an assault that resulted in the deaths of more than two thousand Gazans – combatants and civilians – and the destruction of eighteen thousand homes. When I went back less than three years later the changes were evident everywhere ...”

“... can affect us doubly. We respond to the presented image – the horse in its horseyness – but may also sense the pressure of the person holding the charcoal. Interpreting a particular image, we examine its surface, hoping to discern the intelligence behind it. In interpreting several images and noting how they differ, we might assemble a basis for a ...”

“... Church of England within Christendom. Fisher was undoubtedly the victim of royal tyranny, but it may be unhelpful to describe Henry VIII as ‘the most contemptible human specimen ever to sit upon the throne of England’. Moreover it is questionable whether Fisher displayed that capacity for leadership – ‘clarity and confidence of vision, tenacity of ...”

“... the story, gives a sense of progressive development, of movement towards a goal. Though that sense may still start to grow in individual episodes, to run the tape backwards is to check it, to arrest the leap of the heart as it bounds up. We are given a stronger sense of inevitability, of moments which, open when they were lived, are now frozen in time: each ...”

“... spread over our cars, refrigerators and television sets. Politicians, economists and commentators may agree on little else, but few would now dispute that Britain has suffered from a long and profound failure of what Porter calls ‘sustainable competitive advantage’. Nor would many dispute that this relative decline has been the central political issue in ...”

“... heightened by his singular learning, and given bone and muscle by his logical gifts. You may not agree with him but it is never a mystery where he stands or in what he believes. Beyond this, and what, I think, puts Wollheim in the narrow circle of this century’s creative thinkers, is that his topics are systematically interconnected. ‘His views ...”

“... any of the great results which have been predicted, however ostensibly victorious either side may prove to be, and whatever the results may prove to be for the other. It will not solve the problems of the Middle East, or those of America, now in a deep recession, plagued by poverty, joblessness, and an urban, education ...”