“... Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa may be ‘the world’s most famous painting’ but almost everything about it is obscure. We don’t know precisely when it was painted, we don’t know for certain who she is, and as we stare at her puzzling features for the umpteenth time we are inclined to ask ourselves: what is it about her? It is that question, in all its historical and cultural ramifications, which is addressed in Donald Sassoon’s elegant and comprehensive study of the Mona Lisa phenomenon ...”

“... claim: ‘This change began, to speak approximately, as we must, in the 17th century and may be described as the transition in the art of the West from a poetics of hallucination typical of Spenser to a poetics of delirium, inaugurated by Milton’. The West? That is a large claim. The change Teskey claims Milton represents is not a clean ...”

“... well underway. It had many modern features. ‘The British,’ Scientific American reported on 19 May 1855, ‘have displayed great inferiority in military management in the present war with Russia,’ but it cannot be denied but that the national spirit for engineering enterprise has not failed to show itself in the most favourable light. Thus in the Crimea ...”

“... a human performer impersonating a satyr, and the garlanded wine jar on the stand next to him may be the competition prize. We don’t know where Vibius Philippus was working, but Marsyas had a statue in the Forum in Rome, where he was seen as a symbol of liberty. Dionysiac imagery appeared on vases and bronzes all over Italy at this time, as did scenes ...”

“... its ironic blending of high and low, its whispered implication that things might be different. May not the Linnin of a Tiburn slave, More honour then a mighty Monarke have? That though he dyed a Traytor most disloyall, His Shirt may be transform’d to Paper royall. And may not dirty ...”

“... of messages exchanged between members of al-Qaida during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011; many ended: ‘destroy after reading.’ There was also a 220-page handwritten document inaccurately described by the CIA as bin Laden’s ‘journal’: for the most part, it is a transcription of family discussions during the last two months of bin ...”

“... Whatever may be the judgment of time on the intrinsic value of Renan’s contribution to the sum of knowledge, he can never lose his place among the few great names in the history of letters.’ This assessment from the 1901 edition of Chambers’s Encyclopedia, equally striking today for its confidence and its remoteness, summarises the conventional wisdom at the beginning of the 20th century ...”

“... Toft was suffering a violent and protracted miscarriage. But what exactly had she miscarried? It may have been a malformed placenta or foetus, or, as Karen Harvey suggests, a teratoma – a tumour containing bones, tissues, hair, teeth and flesh that can develop anywhere in the body.Whatever came out of Mary Toft after that long day in the fields, it seems ...”

“... the heart of Norse mythology is the Fimbulwinter, three winters with no summers in between, which may once have been a fact.In desperate circumstances, the poor die but the survivors expand their holdings. The famine may well have strengthened the post-Roman militarised elites who have left their traces in the giant mounds ...”

“... meaning to the very limits’? Can history live by metaphors alone? One answer is yes – we may want to hang on to biographical interpretations at any price.But there are tracks that respect historical destinies and also lead in other directions. Rimbaud himself announced such a possibility when he memorably said, in letters to friends, that ‘I is ...”

“... its mast’ring power, I scarce can fathom, thou wilt never know;My lighter passions into rhythm may glow;This is forever voiceless. Could the flowerOpen its petall’d thought, and praise the dowerOf sunlight, or the fresh gift of the dew,The bounteous air that daily round it blew,Blessing unweariedly in sun and shower,Methinks would miss its ...”

“... have seen the living human as the embodiment of a number of souls or life-forces; the corpse may host only a part of their identity or cohabit with another entity. It’s understandable that the dead should be angry or vengeful: after all, they have suffered a terrible calamity. There may be, as Freud proposed in Totem ...”

“... the purview of local government. The dismal result for Labour in England’s local elections on 7 May was not predominantly a revolt over bin collections. It was strongly related to national revulsion for Labour, and to the country’s transformation into a multi-party democracy administered by a system set up for duopoly. In 2025, Reform took control of ten ...”

“... four words             conjugating present and past         that one may say ‘has been’       drunk and (I guess, not having seen it) sober             a half century at words for animals, people, plants the planet.         ‘Have you a story?’ Every poet who has read with Reading has ...”

“... travelled out of their country in order to be able to speak of it in safety. There are those who may find this assessment too pessimistic. But the country faces formidable problems – fundamentalism, the family succession, regional tensions, the economy, together with a generalised disenchantment and wish for reform. Since Saudi Arabia is essentially a ...”