“... In mid-May, as the Sri Lankan army completed its rout of the Tamil Tigers, President Mahinda Rajapaksa described the scorched-earth campaign as ‘an unprecedented humanitarian operation’. Others were more inclined to see it as a calamity. Among them was the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who had travelled to Sri Lanka with David Miliband to argue, in vain, for a truce ...”

“... philosopher Thomas Davidson, who invited his friend to meet ‘the woman you ought to marry’. It may not be clear who saw her first, but everyone seems to have agreed that Alice Howe Gibbens was destined for William James. Having followed up the proffered advice, William himself dashed off a letter declaring that he had just met ‘the future Mrs ...”

“... we read on to find out. Perhaps we do know, so we read on to see if the killer will be caught. It may be that we know the culprit’s identity, and know they’ll be caught, but we read on to find out how, and why they did it. Or perhaps we know all these things, but, having been introduced to a set of characters, we stay to get to know them ...”

“... Armoured Brigade, serving in northern Europe after D-Day and eventually reaching Prague in May 1945, a couple of weeks after the occupying Russians. He quickly sensed that the prospects for his former homeland were not good, and returned to England, resuming his studies in Oxford in January 1946. He graduated with a First in 1947 (allowed to take a ...”

“... So says the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, issued in Tel Aviv on 14 May 1948. Shlomo Sand’s last two books have questioned the document’s assumptions: were the Jews ‘forcibly exiled’ or did they go abroad in search of new opportunities? If they ‘never ceased to pray and hope for their return’, why did so few bother to ...”

“... I think, to dump the phrase, certainly when it’s used as loosely as this. It doesn’t help. It may however be thought to help MI5. Restoring or boosting its reputation was the main reason this book was commissioned. Whatever the truth or otherwise of the ‘Wilson plot’ and other accusations, they were thought to have ‘damaged public confidence’ in ...”

“... if not the kitchen sink then at least the bath. Alternatively the presence of these bathtubs may be a sign that the free-standing episode related in Book 10 (traditionally called the ‘Doloneia’) was, as most scholars now believe, composed by someone other than ‘Homer’, who was a bit more prone to nod than the writer he emulated. But the magically ...”

“... not to betray him to his mother’. The vastly successful and productive middle-aged Picasso may be a subject for awe; he does not invite compassion. Richardson’s previous two volumes, taking Picasso to the age of 35, were more naturally engaging. The artist had to rise. He had to put behind him his hopeless father (‘an execrable ...”

“... stone of mathematical understanding – and therefore of science itself – was laid. Thales may have been the first to introduce this notion of proof, but it seems to have been the Pythagoreans who first made important use of it to establish things that were not otherwise obvious. Pythagoras also appeared to have a strong vision of the importance of ...”

“... two disasters: a husband dead from a brain haemorrhage and a daughter dead from an overdose. Mrs A may have taken the altruism route to restore some sense and meaning to her life. That is a story fit for Sharp’s book, even if she does not do living donors. Sensational tales notwithstanding, the day-to-day work of organ procurement is mundane and ...”

“... was a possibility. More straightforwardly, people do crazy things out of sexual frustration and it may be that Asquith was ejaculating words in the direction of Venetia Stanley because he couldn’t offload anything else. There was certainly a feeling of frustrated lust about one embarrassing episode when he squandered government resources arranging an ...”

“... with the express purpose of creating the conditions for the sustenance of life. While it may seem that where some see God, Lovelock sees Gaia (‘Gaia looks after us’), he doesn’t say Gaia is God. He has never claimed that Gaia is sentient, or benevolent, or anything so obviously woo-woo as that. Rather, he maintains that all the evidence ...”

“... shelves. This came as a shock – I’m still not sure why Marsh escaped me then, except that she may have seemed in some mysterious way more of a grown-up taste than Dorothy L. Sayers or Christie – but being a completist I settled down last year to read all of her books, in chronological order. And then I read or reread two hundred or so by other writers ...”

“... an investigation. ‘As a result of Professor Dean’s comments,’ he explained, ‘there now may be students on our campus who feel threatened in or outside of the classroom.’ An email, with the subject line ‘Invitation to Participate in Investigation’, has been sent to Hobart and William Smith students by a law firm retained by the college ‘to ...”

“... for Zafrullah In late May 1985, a tidal bore struck the south-eastern coast of Bangladesh causing widespread devastation and loss of life. I Either side of the bund nobody slept That night. It wasn’t the siren warning (The third time this year), but the wind’s cling And the way frisky things stayed wrapped About uprights, legs or gateposts, till swept By a sidling gust up and away, a strange falling Toward the sky ...”