“... Jewish, too. This discovery brightens Tom up. He now knows he is Jewish. He will wear the Star of David, like that on his Uncle John’s war grave, he will learn Hebrew and support the state of Israel. Tom has, at last, got a general idea, a myth, into his pragmatic head – a tribal and political idea to warm up his bleak sense of duty. Tom is more ...”

“... philosophers of science, notably Paul Feyerabend, Ludwik Fleck, Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault and David Bloor. If Latour’s work has caused particular distress, it is at least in part because of his flagrantly cosmopolitan style: witty, imaginative, literate and unrelentingly ironic. For some, all this spells something manifestly frivolous and naturally ...”

“... to obviate identification. Here is the chance for New York’s homeliest girl. Her misfortune may make a fortune right away. Somewhere in the archives of the Mirror, a masked Rosa Travers gazes out in muted triumph. Some time later, the new-model Rosa would, I suppose, have been unveiled. Unless the carbolic acid caused a third-degree burn, the scalpel ...”

“... world wars. Is the Kadavergehorsam explanation adequate? That depends on what we want to know. It may tell us why German soldiers fought on tenaciously even when the war was self-evidently lost, or why economic life continued to function even under severe aerial bombardment. It may explain individual atrocities, such as the ...”

“... morituri whose deaths might seem as edifying as a snuff film. Nonetheless, low brutes though they may have been (among Roman elites, the term ‘gladiator’ could be used as an insult – i.e. ‘thug’ or ‘scum’), gladiators occupied a polyvalent position in Roman elite culture. They were scum who could die like heroes, the lowest of the low, but they ...”

“... of further questions or second trips. Between the lines of your unyielding story another narrative may awaken and begin to stand up. And that will be the story you take home: the unending story of the story itself. You’d do well to snap your pencil and walk away at that point. Exhaustion can be a wise counsellor. But sometimes the second story not only ...”

“... away, but finessed for a world beyond the raucous, claustrophobic clubs they were used to. This may be the moment subculture jettisoned its prefix, and began to infiltrate the culture at large.The jacket covers of two of these new Beatles books feature the classic mid-1960s Fab Four: no longer buttoned up inside matching suits, but individually tailored in ...”

“... not just in it?’ Nagel says he’s ‘using the term “religious temperament” in a way that may seem illegitimate to those who are genuinely religious’, but it won’t seem illegitimate to those engaged in what Johnston calls the ‘truly religious … life’, only to most of those who are ordinarily thought of as religious, those who are counted as ...”

“... households – households containing more than one pair of parents and their children – may exist for only a few years altogether in a society where the complex household is a norm. But as that book showed, the family life of Western Europe has been determined by what has come to be called the ‘Hajnal’ pattern of marriage. Marriage, J. Hajnal ...”

“... a particular person? … It can seem that as far as what I really am is concerned, any relation I may have to TN or any other objectively specified person must be accidental and arbitrary. I may occupy TN or see the world through the eyes of TN, but I can’t be TN. I can’t be a mere person … The experiences and the ...”

“... a reasonable solution to the Scottish revolt, ‘then humbly they [the Scottish Parliament] may commit the governaunce thereof to the next heir of the crown’ – effectively Arran. Cecil’s acceptance of the power of parliament to depose a monarch resurfaced in the (English) Treason Act of 1571, which would have barred Mary from the succession if she ...”

“... In May 1977, Ian Paisley was in a television studio in Belfast when he bumped into Malachy McGurran, a leader of the Official IRA in Northern Ireland. At that time, Paisley was attempting to orchestrate a repeat of the loyalist workers’ strike that had defeated the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement three years earlier ...”

“... in the 20th century’, and what strength in such a case might involve, has its interest, but may in the end not be the main thing. In a century of migrations and dépaysements, mapping motif onto birthplace is most often deceptive. Arthur Lismer and Fred Varley were born in Sheffield, and certainly ended up infinitely better landscape painters than ...”

“... he might be tempted to make such a barely thinkable journey, it was now. He was 31, famous for the David and the Pietà, but his dealings with the pope were deadlocked. If Europe’s ultimate patron was being difficult, perhaps a more obliging one could be found elsewhere. In his author’s note, Enard cannily stops short of asserting the factuality of the ...”

“... were zipping through an amendment a minute. This is undeniably high productivity – which may have been just what Mrs Thatcher intended when she put the heat on them. But it is hard to argue that legislative Stakhanovism on this scale is evidence of, or even compatible with, the work of an effective revising chamber. Moreover, Donald Shell and his ...”