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“... postal system was introduced in September 1968. The first first-class stamp cost 5d, a penny more than second-class. Like most innovations, it took a while to catch on. The secretary of the National Chamber of Trades called it a ‘confidence trick’. Now, almost a third of the more than 80 million letters posted in ...”

“... Responding to Marr’s comments, Ian Jack, the editor of Granta, suggested that it would be more accurate to say there was a ‘lull’. Since, then, Robert McCrum, the literary editor of the Observer, has discussed the question more than once in his column, ‘The World of Books’. And in a recent issue of the ...”

“... intelligence. He brought philosophical reflection to an opulent array of subjects, with more imagination and with greater cultural and historical understanding than anyone else of his time. The collections have been brought to publication by Williams’s widow, Patricia, in each case with the help of one of his friends, who has added an informative ...”

“... Lewis Thomas’s latest book is a collection of 24 short essays of which the first has to do with the gravest problem confronting mankind – the Bomb. In this essay his fans see a different Lewis Thomas – angry where he was once urbane, grim rather than gay, for no aspect of the bomb is at all funny and upon this subject Thomas is unrelievedly grave ...”

“... milk) published a memoir in which she berated her patron, the evangelical abolitionist Hannah More, for embezzling the proceeds of Yearsley’s own Poems on Several Occasions. Scholars have been repeating for decades that Yearsley called this trenchant narrative an ‘autobiographical memoir’, but apparently without checking – she didn’t. For the ...”

“... flying home from Johannesburg six weeks later. The (arbitrary) plan was to hitch-hike around the more obvious tourist spots in Zimbabwe, before making our way, through Namibia, to Cape Town. Hitch-hiking in Namibia wasn’t the most reliable form of transport. The population density is very low, almost the lowest in the world: only slightly ...”

“... struts free, declaring his willingness to return to office. It seems there’s nothing he’d like more than a phone call from the harbour master (a cameo performance from President Napolitano) telling him to get the fuck back on board (‘vada a bordo, cazzo!’). The salvage operation is being run by Mario Monti, an academic economist, former adviser to ...”

“... agent posing as a French tutor at their Oxbridge college. These days, SIS (‘the organisation more commonly known as MI6’) advertises its vacancies in the Economist. Wannabe ‘operational officers’ (the people more commonly known as spies), preselected for their faith in capital and the beneficence of markets are ...”

“... of Congo, and its unhelpful contribution to the civil war there): batteries had to get smaller and more powerful, for example, and state-owned telephone systems had to be broken down and privatised. Then there’s our change of attitude – as much a result as a cause of the encroaching state of permanent communicability. Orange’s advertising their products ...”

“... social science books, several but not all of them by New Yorker staffers (including a couple more from Gladwell), with short, catchy titles and long, friendly subtitles, and if one or other of them appears paradoxical, so much the better. Here is a very small sample: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything; Predictably ...”

“... year, there have been 51,486 sea arrivals and an estimated 1410 dead and missing (2.7 per cent). More than a third of those deaths (489 and counting) have occurred since 18 June, after Salvini took office and announced that Italian ports would be closed to NGO rescue ships. A petition to the Italian Parliament calling for a vote of no confidence in Salvini ...”

“... times, so I can’t be sure – and it’s possible that the show relies on nobody’s watching it more than a couple of times – but I hope that the list is completely new each week. Which might make you wonder how the writers managed to come up with quite so many tedious subjects. Did they lurk about in pubs and restaurants, taking notes on the dreary ...”

“... clever thing of appropriating an opponent’s discourse: the Canadian triffid is an ironic (and more modern) riposte to all the talk about Frankenstein foods and the like. Anyone looking for a good reason to distrust genetic science, however, need look no further than Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable. It’s not published till November, but ...”

“... hate Tolstoy. He provokes a deep enmity in me. He loved Anna but could hardly have killed her off more coldly.’ And it’s certainly the case that the executing train in her version – the drawings are by Valery Kachaev and Igor Sapozhkov – has the name ‘Lev Tolstoy’ embossed on its engine. One reason for the cartoon’s chilly critical reception in ...”

“... in 1988. Springsteen, co-opting a slogan of Nancy Reagan’s, just said no. Now the Boss is doing more than merely refusing Republicans: he’s gone so far as to offer his support to John Kerry. Other ageing rockers joining him on the Vote for Change tour of battleground states include R.E.M., James Taylor and Jackson Browne, with the Dixie Chicks – whose ...”