“... that might replace the ineffective attempt to debunk rumours one by one she had observed in the field (the ‘whack-a-mole’ approach). Facts, as Semmelweis found out, are poor foot soldiers. One of Larson’s case studies concerns the roll-out in Carmen de Bolívar in Colombia of the HPV vaccine, which helps prevent cervical cancer caused by the human ...”

“... who was to become Lord Archer’, and a little later tells us that he was employed to teach Prince Andrew to write grammatically, I am at a loss. I feel there must be a joke in there somewhere. Of course it is a perfectly acceptable ploy for a writer to be deliberately silly but I simply cannot decide whether or not this is what Giles Gordon is doing. When he ...”

“... hand, analogies from conventional political understandings, international relations or the sports field are too slack. Economic community involves a lot more than, say, common membership of a nation state, non-belligerent co-existence or joint involvement in a competitive game ...    The whole network is to be interwoven by mutual responsibilities. No ...”

“... and, most strikingly, Lemann’s title, The Promised Land – is borrowed from another rhetorical field, the dominant discourse of emigration which forms such a crucial element in American national self-definition. In the discourse of emigration, movement is always assigned a positive value. In order to move (whether geographically, economically or ...”

“... of the free’. Half the slaves on the Butler plantations were included in the sale. Most were field hands, but there were also domestic servants and skilled craftsmen, among them coopers, carpenters and blacksmiths. The catalogue did not list prices, but Thomson recorded what many of the slaves sold for. The auctioneer announced the terms: buyers would ...”

“... bright, confident style, Coward irresistibly combined reserve and high camp. He became the merry-andrew of moderation, warning mothers to keep their daughters off the stage, confiding, in Present Laughter (1942), that sex was ‘vastly overrated’ and wickedly pleading: ‘don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans.’ Coward was a performer who wrote: not a ...”

“... lost cities and civilisations out there. His success won him the jealousy of his older brother Andrew, a soldier-settler who tried the writing game without success. The Africa to which Haggard now returned had been partitioned by – as the jokers said – ‘everybody but the Swiss’. The Dutch had long ago introduced a thrawn and turbulent element in ...”

“... tape over every offending apostrophe. My contradictory husband, who is sometimes known in his field as Write-it-Wrong Elbow, liberated a few of the apostrophes by pulling off the adhesive tape. 13 January. The canonisation of Dame Iris proceeds apace and the BBC are now preparing to show on Omnibus extracts from a video taken from an interview carried ...”

“... country. In the post-Nuremberg High Command Trial, American prosecutors brought charges against Field Marshal Wilhelm von Leeb for crimes committed during the siege of Leningrad. But there was no legal basis on which to find Leeb guilty of starving the city, or even of sustaining the pressure of hunger on the residents by firing at civilians trying to ...”

“... says immediately to my wife: ‘Weren’t you kind enough to ask me to a drinks party for Frank Field’s 50th birthday?’ She answers: ‘Yes, and you neither came nor replied.’ ‘Didn’t I?’ says Blair, and subsequently sends a charming letter of apology. The thought that this smiling young Scottish public schoolboy could be the next prime minister ...”

“... neutralised, have received the blessing of Tony Blair and New Labour. This slightly foxed field of dreams is where it will happen, the New Millennium (compulsory capitalisation) will be celebrated in a fitting manner by the biggest tent show in the universe. As the Minister without Portfolio, Peter Mandelson, asserts in a document issued by the ...”

“... employment prospects are 1) the perceived standing of the university they attended, 2) their field of study, and 3) (a distant third) the class of their degree result. The relative standing of universities changes with glacial slowness and continues to involve elements of pure social snobbery. For employers, the most salient difference between ...”

“... Ruth Sullivan, the doyenne of American parent advocates, said that the movie had ‘advanced the field of autism by 25 years’. The new public fascination with autism, coupled with the rise in diagnoses, gave activist groups a long-awaited chance to secure funding for their cause and help from social services. Their goals were admirable, but they went after ...”

“... deliberately excluded from consideration.’ It’s a well-timed question, with Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion’s advocacy of narrative in The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry being so widely and respectfully read, and well-directed too, since it clarifies what’s confused in the Penguin introduction by the editors’ simultaneous recommendation ...”

“... Fuller announced his design for a hexagonal house supported on a mast. The retail mogul Marshall Field invited him to display a model in his department store, to draw attention to Field’s new line of modern furniture, and hired a marketing consultant, who jazzed up Fuller’s concept with the invented name ...”