“... he had used when publishing his earliest poems: Incertus. How far back this mindset went we may never know, because, if Reid is correct, Heaney’s childhood letters have been lost. It is already visible in the opening letter of this selection, written to his schoolfriend Seamus Deane in December 1964, when they were in their mid-twenties. ‘Christmas ...”

“... read many of the same books, from the same canon of French revolutionary literature. He respected David as a painter because of his ‘revolutionary classicism’ and, in his book on The Success and Failure of Picasso, he cites Bakunin’s typically anarchist dictum that ‘the urge to destroy is also a creative urge,’ comparing it to Picasso’s ...”

“... 34 seasons, were dedicated to the subject. Buckley argued on air that however kindly Ho Chi Minh may have seemed in the 1940s, the sheer number of Vietnamese people seeking refuge from repression south of the 17th parallel surely justified US intervention on humanitarian as well as anti-communist grounds (this argument proved influential on the human rights ...”

“... back of a truck talking to a girl as the sun goes down.’ His attachment to quiet epiphanies here may strike us as a little dated: but perhaps it shouldn’t, since these are hardly period-specific pleasures. And one wouldn’t want to line up with the point-scoring American film critics of today, reviled by Wenders in the Introduction as lacking ‘modesty ...”

“... an interpreter to a high military officer of a Warsaw Pact country, then watch it.’ On 31 May 1944, Major Frank Thompson, wearing the British uniform that should have protected him, was captured along with the Bulgarian Partisans to whom he was attached, near Likatova, north of Sofia, found guilty at a staged trial, and publicly shot on 5 June. His ...”

“... the footstool and candelabra in the unfinished portrait of Madame Récamier when he was a pupil in David’s studio). The objects represented here can be traced from old inventories; indeed, an academic study exists devoted solely to Ingres’s eloquent mantelpieces. He shows not the slightest hint of embarrassment about the material expression of power ...”

“... stay with all of us for the rest of our lives and indeed, at the present rate of attrition, it may be something that will only survive in the memory. The combined effect of incessant bombardment with the onset of a Balkan winter may snuff out everything I saw. On a paved street in the centre of town, near the Eternal ...”

“... sometime after 14 February 1479, when he dictated his will ‘lying ill in bed’, and before 11 May, when the will was opened and read. He would have been about fifty. In November that year, his widow, Giovanna Cuminella, married a Messinese notary. The San Cassiano altarpiece (1475-76). The Venetian evidence apart, these fragments give little insight ...”

“... be squared with democratic ideals of political and civic equality? Before the Jubilee the dilemma may have looked insoluble. One proposal was that the Queen should slum it a bit more, perhaps through a spot of biking – the so-called Dutch model of monarchy. Further possibilities for down-marketing readily suggest themselves: the monarch could do something ...”

“... collegial government. The question why this should have been so also yields answers which may apply to many, even most cases. The most obvious explanation might seem to be pathological: the personal inadequacy of monarchs who were unfit for the burdens imposed on them by the lottery of inheritance and who could not manage without their mayors of the ...”

“... Unsurprisingly, some finessing of the notion of blame often takes place here: the possessed addict may have chosen a lifestyle that lends itself to possession – he may have hung around with unsavoury people, made a variety of unwise choices and so on. But the basic point remains: he was taken by his addiction, he didn’t ...”

“... Camp Ashraf after the invasion came away convinced that the group could be a useful ally. General David Phillips, a military policeman who spent time there in 2004, argues that the MEK is no more a cult than the US marines: in both organisations you have to wear a uniform, obey orders and follow rituals that seem bizarre to the uninitiated. Positive feelings ...”

“... in one respect because the melodrama of events drives the story and attracts an audience. It may be risky at times, but the correspondent talking to camera, with exploding shells and blazing military vehicles behind him, knows his report will feature high up in any newscast. ‘If it bleeds it leads,’ is an old American media adage. The drama of battle ...”

“... question, once the northwest passage is open). Some of the effects that an open Arctic Ocean may have on international relations, energy security and global trade are explored in The Future History of the Arctic by Charles Emmerson.* But the idea that a thawing Arctic is something to be afraid of would have baffled our ancestors. For the men who sailed ...”

“... side or not. Anyone hoping for a comprehensive reappraisal of the 17th-century literary canon may be disappointed, too. According to Kerrigan, the historicising tendency in recent literary scholarship ‘has opened up issues that cannot be probed in other ways and equipped us more fully to make judgments about the value of texts’. Such judgments are ...”