“... and as a theologian to evade it. Interrogated in the Tower in Cromwell’s presence in early May 1535, he was asked – according to the indictment – whether he accepted that Henry was now the earthly head of the English church, and replied: ‘I will not meddle with any such matters.’ A letter More wrote to his favourite daughter, Margaret ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... as on the whole an agreeable experience but one controlled by mostly unspoken taboos. The boys may play with the village children, but not after reaching the age of seven, when they are sent off to school, their fees paid by a rich grandfather. When out riding they raise their hats to foot passengers: ‘Mum said this was important, otherwise people would ...”

“... study of the past tense is ‘the only case I know in which two great systems of Western thought may be tested and compared . . . like ordinary scientific hypotheses’. As for his own theory of the tense, it is ‘an opening statement in the latest round of a debate on how the mind works that has raged for centuries’ – this book never runs low on ...”

“... if the correspondence that followed soon retreated into an altercation about what Just William may or may not have got up to.Blake Morrison’s As If, a study of the Bulger case, was published in 1997. The conclusions to be drawn from reading it are not particularly original: the boys should never have been tried in an ...”

“... He and I taught together at University College London in the 1970s. These personal allusions may savour of the excessive. Let me plead that they serve as an introduction to the uncertainties and inconsistencies of his experience of life, to his changing fortunes, contrasting reputations, to the human interest and eccentric charm of Stephen. Of the ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... I might already have protruding breasts. We spend so much of the day with trunks upright that I may signal my attractiveness from the front, not just from the rear. I am female but that does not necessarily imply you are male. Chimpanzees, bonobos and humans all have same-sexed kin, friends and sometimes same-sexed sex partners: our precursors were surely ...”

“... absent, second-person listener, whose identity remains shadowy. At first it seems that this may be a lover: ‘Just before you left me for the first time I had a dream and you were in it.’ We later learn that this person is a woman, but not her name, which Jem refuses to tell another friend when asked. Then it transpires that she is more likely a ...”

“... and BMWs the new rich drive. Ladas and Zhigulis have features that are all their own. Handbrakes may or may not work: ‘It’s just for decoration,’ my friend Sasha once explained. New drivers must be shown each special feature of the gears and clutch. ‘Just force it’ is a common tip for Lada owners. Russians ...”

“... to adultery. Since we are not told much about Othello and Desdemona’s sex-life, the connection may seem gratuitous. Greenblatt linked the two by interpreting a phrase of Iago’s, when he is describing his plot to entrap Othello, to mean that he will appeal to a guilt in Othello about the excess of his erotic feelings for his wife: ‘that he is too ...”

“... Ireland, and from all the talk you might suppose he’d been around the globe. Because That They May Face the Rising Sun does without points of reference, or markers you might use to judge where you are, the very particular place it describes also feels like the only place on earth. It’s a clever trick, and it makes for good stories. Jamesie likes to tell ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... Maxwell Fyfe’s speech came in the triumphal wake of the Congress of Europe, held in The Hague in May 1948 with Churchill as its honorary chairman and 750 delegates from 17 European countries. Although the congress possessed no governmental authority, its cultural committee drew up a charter of fundamental rights to be enforced by a continental supranational ...”