“... generations no true-born Joyce has been female.’ The female element was supplied by his wife May, the unwitting instigator of her husband’s intense dislike for his wife’s relations, especially the females – ‘the sink of the Murrays’, as he referred to them – who must on no account be allowed to pollute the hallowed ground of the Joyce ...”

“... B. Cunningham on Hamid Karzai, 23 September 2014While America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, our commitment to Afghanistan and its people endures.President Barack Obama, 15 October 2015When [Afghans] leave, they break the social contract. This is an existential choice. Countries do not survive with their best attempting to flee. So I have no ...”

“... home unexpectedly, but he keeps missing his chance – until he suddenly suspects that his father may in fact have something to do with the horror in the pit. So it’s partly with relief, and partly with fear, that Michele discovers il Teschio’s older brother, Felice Natale (Hunt doesn’t translate his name as ‘Happy Christmas’), lurking at the ...”

“... not dead. So far, he has lost only the top part of the index finger of his right hand, though he may lose more. He works with chainsaws. Or rather, he used to work with chainsaws. He did not lose the fingertip in a chainsaw accident, though. That would be an improbable scenario, since he is right-handed: this was the trigger finger. In October last year, my ...”

“... even outdo the Bible, which was of course written by divers hands, over a 1500-year period, and may have been assisted in its composition by the Spirit of God Him or Herself. ‘I have now devoted over 25 years of my life,’ Hillier announces in his preface, ‘to the 78 of John Betjeman’s.’ One begins to suspect that Hillier does not in fact ...”

“... table they could use their pocket handkerchiefs. Mountain-high above the sea, today’s passengers may not notice the first intimation of a New World close ahead, the Sargasso Sea of spent condoms washed down from those topless towers (‘Are you seeing what I’m seeing?’ … ‘God, Aldous Huxley would love this!’). It ...”

“... said, kicking a stone, and getting himself into more philosophical trouble than he knew. We may think a kick is not much of a refutation anyway, but a kick in this case actually confirms the opposing argument, since the ‘he’ in question was Berkeley, who had argued that the world exists only as and when we (or God) perceive it. Or kick it. Johnson ...”

“... of the family’s property. ‘Let the practitioner never forget,’ he declared, ‘that he may be the patient’s last and only hope.’ Indeed, Conolly was extraordinarily mistrustful of families, warning of the tricks they might play to unsettle the alleged lunatic and present him in an excited state, giving as an example a wife who abused her ...”

“... step down. A moment’s reflection will suffice to show that this will have no effect. Mugabe may be 76 and increasingly erratic but there are no other leaders with such a following within Zanu-PF. Were Mugabe to step down, there would have to be a Presidential election – which Tsvangirai would win. So Zanu-PF is saddled with Mugabe until April 2002 at ...”

“... and measures. He never wrote it, however, leaving only copious, but very confused, notes – he may have devoted too much time to pursuing his career in the Vatican or to parties with his cronies – but achieved a great reputation in the scholarly world despite this, chiefly for his expertise on the length of the Roman foot. Ingrid Rowland makes Colocci ...”

“... bombings – Hamas’s absence from the Bush Administration’s most-wanted list of terrorists may have been politically expedient, but it gave Israelis little reassurance. During the long conflict with the Palestinians, Jews in Israel haven’t become inured to fear. But the fear isn’t all on one side. As Bayfield reminded the audience, ‘terror takes ...”

“... influence on the outcome. In part this was a result of Lloyd George’s belief that information may be power but knowing when to ignore it was essential to the successful manipulation of power. Instead of relying on Foreign Office expertise, he relied on the instincts of his own amateur ‘Grand Vizierate’. In part it followed from the piecemeal and ...”

“... defined and applied to which different philosophers respond in mutually irreconcilable ways. They may agree that liberty of conscience is a basic entitlement in a just society, while conceding that there are some creeds whose behavioural expression a just, or even minimally decent, society would be bound to outlaw. But in a multicultural society, there ...”

“... naive to take all the noise about feeling at face value, and constant exhortations to sympathy may mark its absence as much as its presence, or at least an anxiety that benevolence was fragile and fleeting. There’s no need, after all, to display notices forbidding spitting unless people are spitting a lot, and by the same token ‘the strident reforming ...”

“... the abusive Egyptian slavedriver, ‘so he knew better than those with no experience that to kill may be sweet, but to have killed is ghastly in the extreme, and that you should not kill.’ How to imagine an ethic that limits violence in an appallingly violent world becomes a central burden of the narrative. What is especially noteworthy about The Tables of ...”