“... Lebanon was heavily bombed by Israeli warplanes on 4 June 1982. Two days later the Israeli Army breached the country’s southern border. Menachem Begin was then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon Minister of Defence. The immediate reason for the invasion was the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador to Britain, blamed by Begin and Sharon on the PLO, whose forces in South Lebanon had been observing a ceasefire for a year ...”

“... programming, as I did when I agreed to join him in the new post of dramaturg. My own brief was to be ‘involved in discussion of the planning and rationale of all ... opera productions’ and responsible for arranging lectures and other events. I had seen ‘dramaturgy’ at work in German theatres and knew something of what Edmund Tracey and Nicholas John ...”

“... her on being dull. In sending her royal brother Edward VI her youthful likeness, soon to be hidden for ever behind the iconic mask of royalty, she apologised for her appearance, ‘the face ... I might well blush to offer’, but not for her mind, of which she would never be ashamed. It was a mind which as yet had ...”

“... subject’s death transcends tactical considerations. Only after the final curtain can the life be properly framed, its dramatic arc seen in its entirety. Its volatile elements need to settle before the sorting-out process can begin. The cause and circumstances of death, the reaction of the survivors, the nature of the will, the tone of the newspaper ...”

“... for the purpose of my profession’. It was a profession he did not like. He was a philosopher by trade, but despite having a covetable job as Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, Robin Collingwood disliked college life and despised academic forms of thought and writing, especially in philosophy. If the responsibilities attached to his ...”

“... the children that ‘we don’t kill unless there is a really good reason.’ He ended the talk by telling the children he hoped that they too would one day have the chance to become senior officers in the IDF.Our life worsens, poverty is spreading, education and health services are deteriorating, the middle class is shrinking, and we are ruled ...”

“... experience,’ the New York Times gushed. You might not recognise the museum after its redesign by the Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi. In the New Yorker John Updike likened its presence to ‘an invisible cathedral’, but it is closer to an abstract palace. The main access is now nearer Sixth than Fifth Avenue, and you enter from either 53rd or 54th ...”

“... which jumped around all over the place when he talked – which was a great deal of the time’. David Gascoyne described in his journal in 1936 how Jennings dominated a meeting of the English Surrealists, ‘as usual … boiling over with energy and excitement’. He reported, too, the scene when Jennings and Tom Harrisson met to discuss the formation of ...”

“... which is unknown to the commentators of the present day, and however right or wrong Blair may be in believing that they will be kind to him, it is unlikely that either his committed admirers or his committed detractors will be led to change their views. To his admirers, his ten-year ...”

“... he was taken into custody and interrogated. Over the following 16 days he was beaten repeatedly by various uniformed and non-military personnel. He was slapped, punched, kicked, and beaten with sticks and hard rubber tubing. On the morning of 26 November, General Mowhoush was stuffed head-first into a sleeping bag, which was then bound with inch-thick ...”

“... love of science in ways that foreigners find strange. So many cultural practices now claim to be scientific that Americans can be notably hazy at distinguishing between academic orthodoxy, vaunting scientistic ambition, and New Age or fundamentalist claptrap. The best-armed anti-Darwinian organisation in my ...”

“... their struggle to exclude a Catholic heir to the throne, while the travelling roadshow organised by Shaftesbury and Buckingham around the King’s bastard son, James, Duke of Monmouth, was playing to rapturous crowds. Activists among the country gentry, incensed by the long prorogation of Parliament in 1675, and ...”

“... The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt – it was Robert Mitchum, his elder by 13 years and a star for more than twenty, who was voted the screen’s ‘godfather of cool’ on America’s university campuses.Both men had got to where they were by doing or seeming to do nothing. It was the ...”

“... a six-part documentary called The Mighty Micro was broadcast on ITV. Written and presented by the late Christopher Evans of the National Physical Laboratory, and based on his book of the same name, the series looked at the ways the world might be changed by the microcomputer ...”

“... a new mosque in Manama. Some insight into Jackson’s life in the Middle East was offered recently by a young man who goes by the name DJ Whoo Kid, has a radio show on the New York station Hot 97 and produces work with gangsta-rap outfits with names like G-Unit and Lil Scrappy. According to MTV News, ‘Whoo Kid says he ...”