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“... the Royal Academy until 8 February (after which it will travel, first to Iowa, then to Toronto), may sound like safe family entertainment designed to appease the Friends and Academicians dismayed by Sensation in the rooms below. It is in fact an original and valuable exhibition devoted to a curious and often daring development in British painting in the ...”

“... In October​ 2010, five months after the coalition government took power, and Theresa May became home secretary, a requirement was brought in for spouses seeking to join their (British or non-EU) partners in Britain to pass an English test as a precondition of a visa (unless they were from an English-speaking country, had a degree taught in English, were over 65, had a mental or physical condition that prevented them from taking the test, or there were ‘exceptional compassionate circumstances ...”

“... constituting the majority in Iran and a large minority in many parts of the Gulf. Analogies we may want to reach for – Protestant/Catholic, northerner/southerner, conservative/liberal – aren’t always helpful on such slippery terrain. It’s hard to explain, for example, why Saudi Arabia and Iran are now at loggerheads but were intermittently allied ...”

“... reckoned to help offset any loss to the planned balance of nuclear forces which the peace movement may cause. So far so good. The military can be applauded for reacting sensibly to political demands. But there are two problems. One is that we may end up with more conventional forces and more nuclear weapons. The other is ...”

“... and tunnels at Derinkuyu and other sites in Cappadocia, large enough to house thousands of people, may have been begun as early as five thousand years ago. It seems improbable that anyone lived in them permanently: they were more likely built as refuges for time of war. Some things never change.Nine miles south-east of Falerii Novi – as the crow flies, or ...”

“... circumstances. The Eighth Amendment passed, gaining 67 per cent of the vote. On 25 May, another referendum will be held on whether to repeal that amendment. This one won’t pass so easily – if it passes at all. So far the campaign has been distinguished by acrimony, falsehoods and a media obsession with ‘balance’ – an insistence that ...”

“... On 18 May 1593 a warrant was issued to ‘apprehend’ Christopher Marlowe, and on 20 May he was brought before the Privy Council for questioning. He was not detained, but was ordered to report to the Council daily until ‘licensed to the contrary’. This state of precarious liberty lasted only until 30 May, when he was fatally stabbed by a man named Ingram Frizer, though whether his sudden death was a matter of coincidence or conspiracy remains unresolved ...”

“... the Labour Party) of a definition of anti-Semitism which endorses the conflation. In May 2016 the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental body, adopted a ‘non-legally-binding working definition of anti-Semitism’: ‘Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be ...”

“... being shown in UK cinemas to mark the thirtieth anniversary of its release. ‘Classic’ may not be quite the right word for this scary, messy film – it’s about forms of rage that don’t add up to hatred, or indeed to anything – but this may reflect a deficiency in the word rather than the film. Great movies ...”

“... the West, travelling in air-conditioned buses and staying in modern government-sponsored hotels, may be pleasantly surprised by their first sight of Central Europe.* In what used to be East Germany the countryside looks as prosperous and cultivated as anywhere in the West. City centres have been tidied up and carefully rebuilt, while the apartment blocks on ...”

“... which this contrast emerges is one of this collection’s main achievements. Modern Scepticism may in fact be descended from Arcesilaus, Carneades, Aenisedemus and Sextus. But we shall see that the ancients would almost certainly not have recognised it as their legitimate heir. The opponents of ancient Scepticism, the ‘Dogmatists’, were those who ...”

“... former as an insurrection in a convent, whereas the latter were real revolutionaries. The simile may have been unconsciously prompted by an elaborate and highly finished drawing of hysterical nuns entangled with fanatical Huguenots who are disentombing the body of Queen Matilda. This drawing by the young Millais is currently on display in an exhibition at ...”

“... existence of moral obligations ‘dictated by reason’. At the end of Shame and Necessity, which may be the best historical study of ethical ideas in recent decades, Williams says that Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel are all on the same side, all believing in one way or another that the universe, or history, or the structure of human reason can, when properly ...”

“... world of the arts, where supply is eternally in excess of demand, and one finds shelter where one may. Nor am I recommending any variety of Noble Savagery or Doing-your-own-thing. The latter is a contemporary phenomenon worth noting as one of several factors in the weakening of poetry as a public affair. A lot of interest is shown in poetry today, compared ...”

“... other hand, soldiers who take no prisoners when clearing the survivors out of a bombarded village may have no sense that they are engaged in anything other than a messy military operation, and be quite indifferent to the identity of those they kill. Connecting the genocidal fantasy with the murderous reality is tricky. Genocide is a big-picture, ‘vision ...”