“... with the Pakistan government. The government denies this. Army officers admit that the strikes may have killed scores of al-Qaida fighters, and that the ISI may have supplied intelligence for the operations, but the missiles have also killed civilians, including pro-government tribal elders. The Pakistan army believes ...”

“... to have been unembarrassable. Yet that’s not how it worked over here. David Laws’s 22 Days in May, which recounts the negotiations that preceded the formation of the coalition government from the inside, explains how it happened that in our case the winners actually ended up winning. Hardly surprisingly, it’s not that Lib Dem politicians emerge as more ...”

“... to the decline in bee populations. Without any consensus on ultimate causes, some fear we may end up following the example of commercial fruit growers in the Hindu Kush, who resorted to pollinating fruit tree flowers individually by hand more than a decade ago when native pollinators were temporarily exterminated. It didn’t take them long to grasp ...”

“... in the making. Most of the Venezuelan opposition boycotted the presidential election held last May, in which Nicolás Maduro was standing for a second term, and refused to recognise his victory or the legitimacy of his new term in office. Within hours of Guaidó’s announcement, by contrast, the US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, among other ...”

“... them. Moïse’s presidential guard didn’t do much, if anything, to stop the attack. They may have been complicit. Only Moïse and his wife, Martine, were shot; she is said to be convalescing in Florida. The judge who declared Moïse dead said he hadn’t been able to interview anyone who admitted to being on the scene.Moïse moved quicky from obscure ...”

“... less deadly over time, because a virus that kills its host will not then transmit to others. This may be true of a very deadly virus that kills its host early, but with Sars-CoV-2, most infected people have mild symptoms, and most deaths are two weeks or more after infection, while the virus is most transmissible much earlier, peaking approximately between ...”

“... perhaps everyone should. But if someone is determined to rob you or grab you on the street, there may not be much that you, the average person going to the shops or walking home from a friend’s, drunk or distracted or tired from your week, can do. Given the unlikeliness of a random attack, even in the dead of night, it’s logical not to alter your ...”

“... means (and probably is the origin of) ‘swindle’. Visiting Venice, Sebald thinks two young men may be following him. ‘The fear passed across my mind that these two men who were looking at me now had already crossed my path more than once since my arrival.’ He takes off for Verona, where he sees (or thinks he sees) the same men again: I became aware ...”

“... Mandela is, in fact, manufacturing a new myth: that the past no longer matters. But it does. It may be forgiven, but it can’t be forgotten. By legitimating the perpetrators of past apartheid crimes in the interests of future peace, conversion without repentance is condoned. Not without reason does the religious practice of cleansing from past sins insist ...”

“... alleged misrepresentation, and the sources of that misery, a misery James has yet to experience, may include the thought that not all fishing voyages are wholesome. Patrick McGrath’s first book, which has only just managed to precede his second in British bookshops, has 13 ornate horror stories. Hands sprout from heads, pith-helmets are thereby ...”

“... a translator working for the Jewish Council of the Warsaw Ghetto. His fluent command of German may have helped him to survive the Nazi occupation. He joined a resistance organisation, escaped from the Ghetto, and spent the last years of the war in hiding with his wife. Their lives were saved first by a Pole who gave them shelter, later by the advancing Red ...”

“... taken up by a middle-aged actor belatedly trying to discover what crime or crimes his father may have committed long ago. Geoffrey Elder is introduced as a former friend, now deceased, by Julian Symons himself, who purports merely to have edited the thespian’s posthumous ms. Symons admits to shaping and sharpening the presentation of Elder’s ...”

“... have been perfectly at home in the introduction to a student edition thirty years ago. It may be that the task he sets himself – that of taking proper cognisance of reception aesthetics, current bibliography and the more convincing variants of post-structuralism, while nonetheless producing cheerfully definitive thematic readings – is simply ...”

“... explored. He suggests, and rightly, that the most compelling evidence for the association may be found among those who left Dorchester, Old England, for Dorchester, New England. The godly were convinced that with reformation in religion would come reformation in society. Luxury, pride and fornication offended God, but these vices brought catastrophe ...”

“... movies as if he were some sort of touchstone.’ In another child of the Sixties, this sentiment may strike a chord. For the rest, it will probably epitomise what they don’t understand, cannot share, and must therefore dismiss as rubbish. The voices in this book would provide some good lines for a fringe theatre show about a bunch of women rapping (as it ...”