“... Knowing something of Argentina gives one no privileged insight, on 18 April 1982, into what should be done; it does give one a stronger desire to avoid a war, and a different awareness of some of the issues. Whatever happens to ships or governments, countries do not sink. In his Britain and Argentina in the 19th Century, published in 1960, Professor H ...”

“... when we are being shifted from him to her. The result is a blurred hagiography: Ingrid Bergman, to be sure, but softly flattering, the hard outlines left to the imagination. A pity, because Miss Bergman wants something from her readers. ‘lt could never happen today,’ she says in effect, referring to the world-shattering scandal of 1948, when she bolted ...”

“... that he tells us is that it was originally written in German, that it was translated into English by Daphne Hardy, an English sculptress who was living with Koestler at the time, that she invented its English title, that it enjoyed a great success in France when it was translated soon after the war as Le Zéro et l’Infini, and that it was dramatised in 1951 ...”

“... enduring and improbable stereotype of the journalist-as-hero). Writers, directors and actors may be forgiven for misrepresenting the minutiae of the life of a journalist: they may not, after all, be lucky enough to observe the proprietor, the editor and the reporter, from life. But the one area of which they do have some ...”

“... pictures appeared showing bruises and grazes on Tymoshenko’s skin, caused, Tymoshenko said, by a beating at the hands of prison staff, Merkel raised the stakes. In a speech to the Bundestag, she bracketed Ukraine with Belarus as a European country where ‘people are still suffering under dictatorship and repression’. She still hasn’t decided ...”

“... court or place out of Parlyament’. Parliament in return has made it a rule, enforced until now by the speakers of both Houses, that it will not interfere with the decisions of the courts, whether by anticipating their judgments or by attacking them. If Parliament does not like what the ...”

“... it. But we can also remember the values of such a system, whatever the costs. My parents had to be persuaded to let me stay at school after I was 16, but they were fairly easily persuaded, and the whole larger culture helped to persuade them. Higher education was a good thing because it was free, and it was free because it was a good thing. It was what we ...”

“... Republic, was fired from his job at the branch of the fast-food chain Pret A Manger in York Way, by St Pancras Station, in the middle of September. He had been working there for two years. A statement on Pret’s website explains that he was ‘dismissed for misconduct’, having ‘made homophobic comments to a colleague’ in December 2011. Pret wanted to ...”

“... 2008 the underperforming club was bought from Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Thai prime minister, by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi. Now City are trying to buy their way to a major trophy and Tevez, an Argentinian striker, is part of the masterplan: he is paid £250,000 a week. (Actually, it’s a little more complicated than that, as ...”

“... and forms of their trade, but at the moment they have six stirring, whirling automata created by Paul Spooner. They can be observed in motion on the hour, every hour, but are almost as nice when they are still. Three of them feature animals. One, called Winter, has 16 blackbirds rotating on a number of axes, swooping ...”

“... to its population, transforming the Republican heartland into a small, livid bud enveloped by a corolla of healthy blue petals. This was an example of consolation cartography, a representation of the United States of liberal dreams. Students of geography call this kind of graphic an ‘area cartogram’, and Mark Monmonier invokes them in his spirited ...”

“... of Dryden to the mid-20th century, Dr Brewer argues, English literary culture has been dominated by what he calls ‘Neoclassicism’ – by a taste, that is, for the realistic representation of likely events. A.C. Bradley is in this sense a Neoclassical critic; and the most characteristic product of Neoclassical taste is ...”

“... Salome kicks her leg up as Herod Antipas, corpulent and sagging, takes in the spectacle, flanked by his bride, dark-eyed Herodias. The king’s rheumy gaze is fixed on his stepdaughter’s nakedness. In the corner, a kneeling servant proffers Salome’s reward, chosen at her mother’s behest: the severed head of John the Baptist, gory and ragged, already ...”

“... That is a disconcerting fact for our modern environmental awareness – which thus appears not to be modern at all, but almost as old as the manufacturing processes that have caused all the trouble. We have a triumphalist perception of human treatment of the environment: for a long time there was benighted callousness about it, then wisdom dawned, in isolated ...”

“... Siècle et la vision de Dieu, a collection of 63 French 17th-century religious pictures which can be seen at the Villa Medici in Rome until 28 January, Olivier Bonfait and Neil MacGregor challenge us to take theology as seriously as aesthetics. They also prove that it requires more than a sensitive eye and a generous imagination to understand a picture. The ...”