“... a Soviet spy, and with her support, Kuczynski was recruited by Moscow and received a visit from Richard Sorge, a charismatic German described by Macintyre as ‘a strange mixture of bibliophile and brawler, pedantic scholar and hard-nosed functionary … a dissolute warrior-priest’.* The Hamburger home became a rendezvous, and domesticity a ...”

“... In any case, he wasn’t the lone source of nerve agents for long. Two other German chemists, Richard Kuhn and Konrad Henkel, were studying the way nerve agents functioned at the chemical level. As part of their research they synthesised the third compound in what is now called the G series of nerve agents. Soman was twice as powerful as ...”

“... onto treatment whether the patient needs it or not, and people may die under the impressive weight of medical science even while everyone’s conscience remains absolutely clear. Professional codes of this kind come into existence, the authors suggest, because of an insecurity we all feel about coping with uncertainty. Much of ethics (like much of the ...”

“... particularly likeable. The Fermata is full of jocular euphemisms. Arno’s penis is his ‘richard’, his ‘Juiceman’, his ‘stain-stick’, his ‘gender-beam’, his ‘bloated factotum’. Considering it in conjunction with the relevant testicles yields ‘moist troika’ and ‘trilogy-in-flesh’. Semen is ‘pecker-paste’ or ...”

“... account of female animals working out. Eberhard delineates a world, concealed from view by the weight of his academic burden, which is quite extraordinary. To advance his argument against the male focus in the history of evolutionary biology, he takes an alarmingly close look at animal genitalia. His case, briefly, is this. The sheer ‘morphological ...”

“... was taken in haste outside the local vodka factory, and it would not be wise to put too much weight on more careful ones made more recently. But these have been quite striking. The Alliance is consistently preferred by between a quarter and a third of all voters. Nearly two-thirds of those who voted Conservative last time, well over a third of those who ...”

“... use of the rich Elgar archives at Broadheath and in the Worcester and Hereford Record Office. In weight and work, these books together dwarf all previous Elgariana. The twice-told tale unfolded here is by now very familiar in its outlines. For the first forty years of Elgar’s life, there was little to suggest that genius, greatness and Gerontius were to ...”

“... of all the goods traded in the world, some $3 trillion worth – but barely one per cent of its weight! – travels via air freight.’ This promethean fireball of iPads, Peruvian blooms, farmed salmon and Amazon Prime deliveries is what these ardent neoliberals view as powering the world’s growth: like it or not, we are all in the comet’s supply ...”

“... in successive Coca-Cola Christmas campaigns, and hasn’t let up since. Bears distribute their weight towards their hind legs, and the resulting slinky ungainliness is a gift to animation. Cartoon bears melt hearts by contriving to lope and shuffle at the same time.But it all began in violence; or, rather, in a disavowal of violence. It’s well known that ...”

“... Tibet bandwagon has become a sleek and efficient vehicle on which glitterati Buddhists such as Richard Gere, Harrison Ford and the noxious Steven Seagal hitch regular rides. The Chinese occupation of Tibet has become the highest-profile colonial issue in the global consciousness, and a considerable weight about the neck ...”

“... phrase, Pearse’s ‘vertigo of self-sacrifice’. He addresses the question of how much weight should be placed on the blood sacrifice idea partly by examining the military strategy of the rebellion. No plans have survived and some of the rebels’ actions seem bizarre. Why was Dublin Castle not taken as a priority? It was weakly defended and once ...”

“... are best exemplified in the three essays that give the theory their full support: those of Richard Hare, John Harsanyi and James Mirrlees. The first two are the only reprinted articles in this collection, and represent two by now well-known and influential approaches to justifying the theory. Hare’s essay expounds the derivation of utilitarianism ...”

“... on the whole batch. From this point on, Orwell’s satirical sketch begins to crumble beneath the weight of its own laborious hyperbole. ‘Do I seem to exaggerate?’ he asks and then he does one of his characteristic ‘Ask anyone’ corroborations. ‘Ask any regular reviewer ... whether he can deny in honesty that his habits and character are such as I ...”

“... depressed fellow prisoners, organising sports and other activities, even though he lost 90 lbs in weight. Returning to Russia, he showed similar courage in the face of the Bolsheviks, whom he detested, and ended his days selling cigarettes in Tbilisi marketplace, still dressed in princely garments. Some Russian aristocrats who came to fight were men of the ...”

“... of international security to which any regime, whatever its complexion, would have had to give weight. The affairs of Catholic France and Spain tend to figure only when those countries directly involve themselves in Dutch developments. It is a pity, too, that Pincus passes silently over the tense Anglo-Dutch relations of the years 1654-60 and the struggles ...”