“... well as his view of laughter as an aid to sociability; so too did Hutcheson’s pupil Adam Smith. David Hume often resorted to ridicule to undermine hypocrisy or superstition, even if he doubted its capacity to settle controversial questions, arguing that mockery was as likely to distort as to reveal the truth. Some of Hume’s philosophical adversaries, such ...”

“... herself in her art. (Male painters might project aspects of themselves onto their depictions of David, but couldn’t do the same with their Judiths and Lucretias.) In her allegorical works, Artemisia brought artist and subject together by reifying the female personifications used in academic painting to represent abstract qualities and ideals. With superb ...”

“... moment of maturity never arrives; success does instead. By the age of 34, Levy has talked David Remnick into hiring her as a staff writer at the New Yorker, and after that there is, as her dad rather ominously puts it, ‘Nowhere to go but down.’ When she and Lucy decide to have a baby – Levy, never one to miss out on an adventure, does the ...”

“... but it didn’t cut the numbers coming in. And May’s driving purpose was to cut numbers, after David Cameron had recklessly pledged to bring net annual migration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ from nearly a quarter of a million. Family migration was not the only target – May also capped work permits and student numbers – but the language test was ...”

“... as an experimental novelist, but the narrative slackness of these books isn’t like that of David Markson’s novels, for instance, which have the minimalist, unnerving rhythm of a needle trapped in the final groove of a record. Their dark outlook isn’t like that of Thomas Bernhard, whose cynicism is driven by a kind of grim joy, nor do they have the ...”

“... and may weather the crisis, but in a recent podcast by the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club, David Steel, the reserve manager for the Isle of May, says he fears that a third of the world’s bonxies may already be dead. It’s possible that without constant pressure from skuas, other species like kittiwakes and petrels may have a better breeding ...”

“... exchanges with writers and artists from the Egyptian-French Joyce Mansour to the African American David Hammons. The exhibition as a whole, too, is the result of multiple meetings with many contributors: a collective research project reminiscent of early Surrealist enquêtes into the nature of dreams and desires.The curators chart three paths through the ...”

“... and his family spent Thanksgiving at the Nantucket home of Carlyle’s co-founder, the billionaire David Rubenstein. When the US government spends trillions of dollars, somebody somewhere is in for a ...”

“... male and female alike (and particularly the younger ones). Some of them, such as Dyan Sheldon and David Holden, have interesting things to say: others merely plod on across well-trodden ground. Stephen Wall’s ‘The Bridge’ is a wispy and indulgent fragment about a marital break-up and a one-night stand: old themes, old ideas, old forms, old ...”

“... park lit with a curious violet effect. An interviewer in Diary of a Young Soul Rebel thinks of David Lynch and Hitchcock in relation to this scene, and certainly those names evoke the right sort of frozen ceriness. But there is excitement in the shot, too – a sense of sexual adventure. The mood is lyrical rather than frightening, and it is into this mood ...”

“... Within days of his death, he and his poetry were appropriated for public use. The young pacifist David Garnett spoke bitterly of how Eddie Marsh exploited Rupert’s image in the 1918 Memoir: We like our boys to wear their hair rather long – to dabble in Socialism, to dabble in ‘decadence’ ... to fancy they really care about ethics – but all the ...”

“... narrative that his whole story (however loony) makes a much better read than the sober, earnest David Attenborough-style version. Take ‘brachiation’, for example – the ability that some monkeys acquired about 15 million years ago to swing from branch to branch by their arms. In just five pages Young persuades us not only that this must have been a ...”

“... see, of our plans for the evening and the rest of the season. And of the impending publication of David Gower’s autobiography.* This had been ghosted by Martin Johnson, a man who, since he began following Leicestershire for the Leicester Mercury back in 1973, two years before Gower’s first-class career began there, had known him better than most. The ...”

“... their tight formations, the ranks hold each other up; soloists are apt to droop. Dickens finishes David Copperfield uncharacteristically: ‘O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!’ It is intensely ...”

“... That effort, failing in Vietnam, produced the news reporter as American hero – Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersch, Jonathan Schell, Peter Arnett. They reported not only the war the government did not want its citizens to see, but also the government efforts to invent a war for domestic consumption. ‘Part of the Vietnamese Seventh Infantry ...”